The strike animation

A boy of about nine watches the screen instead of the pins, mouth open, waiting for the burst of confetti and the cartoon pin that does a small stiff-legged dance before bowing. He misses the actual pins falling; by the time his eyes drop back to the lane, the rack is already gone and the sweep bar is descending. The animation runs three, sometimes four seconds: a flash, a starburst rendered in whatever graphics package the scoring system shipped with a decade ago, a jaunty musical sting clipped short before it resolves. It plays identically for a nine-pin leave that limps to a spare and for a flush strike that would otherwise deserve the room's full attention, which flattens the two into the same brief spectacle. Regulars have stopped looking up. The screen exists to reward the newest and youngest bowlers in the house, who have not yet learned that the real event happened a half-second earlier and six feet lower, where the ball actually met the wood. Overhead, the loop resets itself between frames whether or not anyone is watching, four seconds of confetti held in reserve for the next nine-year-old who has not seen it yet. The pins, meanwhile, are already being swept away.

Beatrice Womack