You've got me under pressure!

I have a love-hate relationship with being under pressure. My mind seems to work better when I’m in a situation where something is on the line; be it a tight deadline or the tenth frame of a make-it-or-break-it game of bowling, I somehow manage to maintain a level head. My body, however, reacts in ways that I wish I could control.

Take for example last night’s Game #2 during my weekly tour of duty in the bowling league I’ve belonged to for years. My team was facing our biggest rival and I, personally, held the game in my hands. After all was said and done, this game truly came down to me and one other bowler — a man notorious for top-notch crunch time performances. His team had a one pin advantage heading into this moment in the game. All I had to do was outperform him and we’d come away with the victory.

Now, in my head, I am loving this moment. Those situations are what I truly, truly love — when all other factors are throw out the window and everything comes down to one single moment in time when I have to execute something perfectly. I am analyzing the situation, I am able to clearly see what I need to do, I have trained myself to blank out every other sound around me and concentrate solely on the sound of my heart pounding inside my chest. Whump. Whump. Whump. Whump. Last night, I thought the damn thing was going to burst out of my body.

My body, however, is a whole other matter. My arms and legs are rubbery, my breathing becomes erratic, my vision sometimes tunnels, and my fingers go ice cold. The worst example of this came during my 299 game earlier this year. Jesus Christ. I thought I was going to black out.

So in these high-pressure situations, I think it’s safe to say that I could be classified as a “confident mess.” My mind is sharp, my body is jelly.

A couple of seasons ago, I did something to my right arm. I have no idea what I did but whenever I first show up to practice bowl on Tuesday nights, my initial throw is always done very gingerly. My entire arm stings from the elbow down to my wrist. I’ve thought about going to the doctor but didn’t want him to tell me that I’d have to stop bowling for any amount of time. I rest it during the summer break in the hopes that it’ll just go away but inevitably, for a couple weeks of the season, it’ll hurt like holy hell. You can tell when it’s in pain as I’m rolling the ball pretty damn slowly and I grunt when I let the ball go. Well, somewhere early on in Game #2 the familiar stinging sensation came back. Great. Just great.

Pat, my nemesis at the moment in our showdown, gets up and rolls an eight. I gingerly roll a nine. The game is now perfectly tied up. He gets a spare, I get a spare, and the game comes down to one single roll.

I became conscious of how my ears were hearing nothing from the external world even though I could see people talking and could easily see pins crashing on the lanes all around us. My heart was pounding and my breathing was, of course, all over the place. I put my hand on my chest to feel just how hard the old ticker was thumping. Whew. My arm was stinging but I’m trying my best to ignore it. “Just one more roll,” I keep telling myself, “just one more solid roll.”

Pat threw a seven, which is completely not his usual ending to a head’s up competition in the tenth frame. So, it was all set. All I had to do was knock down eight pins and we win the game. I reach for the ball, let ‘er fly with a wince of pain, and watch as I get the weakest strike I’d thrown all night. Victory was ours.

After those big moments when I pull off whatever I’d set my sights on, I usually have to immediately walk off and spend a minute or two by myself to calm down. Last night was no exception. I immediately stole off to the bar and bought a pitcher of beer for my team.

There’s always a very cold, almost chilly sensation that runs throughout my entire body as I enter the “calming down” phase. When I’m bowling, this takes the form of me getting a split or something goofy like that in the first frame of the following game. And, of course, I opened twice to start the next game.

Some things never fail. Damn pressure. God, I love it.