Patrick Seitz

May 17, 2003

This journal entry brought to you by the number 3...

I saw a three-legged dog and had the best single hour of bowling in my life this afternoon. I sure hope the two events weren't connected--

Dammit. I was going to forge ahead with my journal entry before I thought of a connection, but my brain outmaneuvered me. The dog had three legs. The bowling ball had three holes. If you factor in this afternoon's faculty mini-retreat (Catholicism, the Trinity, etc.), you've got an honest-to-goodness pattern on your hands. Oh, and I gave a quiz on "Julius Caesar" today where one of the correct answers was thrice (as in, "How many times does Antony unsuccessfully offer Caesar the crown at the top of the play?"). Not once, not twice, but thrice.

First, the bowling. I stopped by Tava Lanes on a whim as I came home from running an errand. I rented a lane for one hour for the princely sum of $12. If you're bowling by yourself, and there's nobody in the lanes to either side of you, you can get about half a dozen games in before you run out of time.

The score of my first game was 99, nothing to write home about. Late in the game, though, I finally figured out what everybody had meant when they had told me throughout the years to keep my eyes on the arrows and aim for them instead of the pins. I finally held true to that advice, not even looking down at the lane at the moment of release, and my bowling became much more consistent. On my five games, I bowled 107, 112, 116, 137, and 125 for an afternoon average of 116. For me, that's pretty damn good!

I only saw the three-legged dog for a few seconds, but it was a significant enough experience to merit talking about it. I was driving home from the errand I mentioned before, but I hadn't yet reached the bowling alley. I was waiting at a red light and I saw a woman and her dog in the parking lot to my right. The dog was bouncing from its back legs to its front legs when it walked, which caught my eye. A second later, when I realized that it didn't have front legs plural, the odd gait made more sense. Even with its handicap, though, you could tell the dog was happy and excited. It kept bounding forward, turning around, and hopping back to its owner.

It was enough to make me feel better about a different dog experience I had. One time, as my girlfriend and I were about to enter the theater in North Hollywood in which we presented the one-acts a few months back, we noticed a "lost dog" sign on a pole. According to the sign, the cute little guy in the picture had a heart condition, and without his medication, he'd die. That had me really down in the dumps. I mean, your average lost dog has at least some chance of being adopted by a new family. But no, not this dog. With this dog, I couldn't daydream that it would wander into the yard of some crippled kid, and that the two would subsequently become best friends. No, this dog was marked for death unless it magically came across a psychic veterinarian.

Anyhow, today's three-legged dog made up for that.

Posted by patrick at May 17, 2003 12:17 AM

Comments

Ah. Bowling. My second favorite sport in which to participate, after ice skating. C'mon, Mr. Seitz. I'll take you on at an hour-a-lane-rental. I even have my own shoes and not one, but two, balls. (Insert lame joke here.)

And nothing builds up the forearm like bowling. Except maybe excessive kitten-killing, the only advantage of which is that you don't have to pay anyone by the hour for that...

But the replays aren't as easy.

Posted by: Jon Bastian at May 17, 2003 04:39 AM

When did you see a three legged dog? I hope it wasn't after you drank that four dollar glass of cider!

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