Rules
Yesterday I did something I have never done before, and I will probably never do it again.
We had a fundraising event at work for the United Way — sort of a picnic lunch for 1000. Being a manager, I had to sign up to help out, dishing up food or passing out raffle tickets or something. By the time I got the signup sheet, the easy jobs were taken, so I signed up to help with “pineapple bowling.”
You will be glad to know that no pineapples were harmed in this process. It is just a kid’s game, with plastic bowling pins shaped like skinny pineapples, and a plastic ball that resembles a coconut, in that it is brown, and round. My job was to stand the pins back up after each player’s turn.
Not a complex job, but a rather strenuous one, especially on a warm day. Every 30 to 60 seconds, I had to bend, kneel or squat (none of the options being either dignified or comfortable) and set the ten pineapples up in a triangle, then step back. It was like calisthenics. After 20 minutes, I was perspiring a good deal more than one wants to do at the office, and I was probably flushed and looked ready for someone to take me out on a gurney. Luckily, my replacement arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule, and since he is 15 years younger and also owes me a favor, he offered to take over right away.
The funny part of this, to me, was about half way through. We were setting up the pineapples a few inches apart, and someone I don’t know came up to me, inspected what I thought was a particularly symmetrical triangle, and said, “You know you’re doing this wrong.”
Apparently the International Pineapple Bowling Federation (IPBF) states that the pineapples should be touching each other, to facilitate getting strikes. Of course, the rules are designed for three year olds. Many adults knocked over all ten pins — in fact some of them knocked over their own ten plus a few in the adjacent “lane.”
My mother used to say there is a right way to do everything. And about that, she was wrong. There is no right way to reset pineapple bowling pins. Next time, I’m going to put them in a damn hexagon, and see what everyone thinks of that.
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