1. The Beginner Bowler Mixed League Pattern -- It's not sport-compliant, but you'd never know it after an hour or two on this beauty. Plastic balls all over the place, carrying the oil down the lane and at angles heretofore thought impossible. The end of the pattern, rather than having a tightly grouped set of oil contrails coming from one part of the lane, has what looks like Medusa's hairstyle.
2. The Oiled It With A Bug Sprayer Pattern -- Some houses haven't yet discovered the miracle of the modern wick machine. They continue to oil their lanes in a fashion that recalls a how-to application guide for DDT. Try The Oiled It With A Bug Sprayer Pattern to test your skills on a shot where, especially if the lane guy is drunk, there is sprayed-on oil followed by a set of footprints down the middle of the lane. The occasional cigarette ash bomb falling from his cigarette adds difficulty. And if he's really lazy, and "buffs" the odd-numbered lane going forward and the even-numbered lane coming back -- well, that's even better. Be sure to watch for those oily footprints just inside the foul line as he was changing lanes -- always a challenge!
3. The Fraternity Boy Pattern -- The Fraternity Boy Pattern combines the nuances of The Beginner Bowler Mixed League Pattern with its own challenges. Namely, no head oil at all, and after said fraternity boys get drunker and drunker, they cross the foul line continuously, and slip and wipe (or buff, if you prefer) the head oil away with their Oxford shirts and Duck Heads. To make this one sport-compliant, simply add a little beer to the heads, the result of a common dare: "I bet you can't bowl with your right hand while holding a pitcher in the other!" Sadly, the darer is always correct.
4. The You Can't Find Good Help These Days Pattern -- This one is sneaky, as it only shows up on one lane in any given house. It's usually around Lane 18, when the extension cord on the oil machine is about to run out of length, but Assistant to the Assistant Lane Boy (or AttALB for short) hasn't noticed, because he's too busy trying to figure out if the girl in the short miniskirt on Lane 27 is wearing panties. This usually results in the lane machine coming unplugged halfway down Lane 18, and then when the AttALB sees it, he panics, plugs it back in and the confused machine starts putting down head oil at the 30-foot mark. Whoever gets the pair of 17 and 18 is in for quite a ride, my friends.
5. The Oil Machine Was Probably Made By Studebaker Pattern -- This is typically an old wick-style machine that was last exposed to routine maintenance around the time Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. So over the course of a 40-lane center, the machine might stop at the 30-foot mark on one lane, the 37-foot mark on the next, the 23-foot mark on the third lane and somewhere around Lane 11, it completely gets its circuits gibbled, goes the complete length of the lane, happily depositing oil along the way, through the pin deck and off into the pin pit, its appendages flailing and wick spraying oil like some kind of frightened giant squid whose aquarium at Sea World was suddenly drained without any forewarning to the poor squid.
6. The No Pattern At All Pattern -- This is an offshoot of The You Can't Find Good Help These Days Pattern, typically the result of the Assistant to the Assistant Lane Boy remembering to fill the machine up with stripper, but forgetting to fill it up with oil. (This pattern is also known by its other, more-popular-with-the-bowlers name, The This Is B***s*** Pattern.) This pattern can also be modified by the AttALB into The No Pattern At All For Half The House Pattern, which is self-explanatory and usually involves an impromptu filling of the oil tank around Lane 16 once the original oversight was discovered.
7. The What Do You Mean You "Experimented" With The Pattern Pattern -- Unsuspecting lane men have for years feared this pattern, usually a result of the Assistant to the Assistant Lane Boy showing his friends how his new, technologically superior lane machine can put down any one of 136 preprogrammed patterns, and/or write the AttALB's name on the lane in oil. This pattern usually shows up after the AttALB's last display to his friends consisted of commanding the machine to scribble "Kilroy Was Here" on Lane 3, then putting the machine up, and when the head mechanic began laying down the pattern for that night's league, he did so while failing to check that the machine was set correctly. Typically, the plot is revealed around, say, the first frame of the first game, up and down the center, by a host of vociferous patrons. (Note: This pattern is commonly confused with the alternative name for No. 6, i.e., The This Is B***s*** Pattern. Because there technically *is* a pattern here, be careful not to mix the terminology for the two. Thank you.)
Jess
Edited on 1/26/2009 11:59 PM
