This week's column:Candlepins didn't bowl him over

I grew up in New York, where we engaged in what people in Eastern Massachusetts refer to as "big balls bowling." Despite being vaguely suggestive, this is a pretty accurate moniker.

Here -- as I discovered recently when I lent my bowling skills to a charity bowl-a-thon -- the balls are anything but big. And while I tried, I simply could not master the finesse being displayed by the obviously semi-professional bowlers in the other lanes. Quite to the contrary, my ball would tend to hit the floor with the force of a small nuclear explosion, sending a thundering echo throughout the alley and eliciting actual cries of pain from small children.

The experience was somewhat demoralizing considering that, in my younger (and bigger-balled) days, I was an actual league bowler. Yes, as a high school freshman my friend Mark Pengelski signed me up for a team he was on with Joe DiVestea, who had a habit of clapping to himself for no apparent reason. Mark did this despite the fact that I had told him, in no uncertain terms, that bowling was out of the question -- I had too many other things to do, like homework and finishing puberty.

For the rest of this week's AT LARGE by Peter Chianca, click here.