Have you been bowling lately?

House ball and me: 105 the first time back.

I went last Saturday, and things have changed a lot.

These days, you don’t even have to know how to add. Or to understand nuances like waiting until the first ball of the next frame to score a spare. Now, the magical electronic pin counter does it all for you. Just sit down, check the screen and your score mysteriously appears.

These days, you even have to be careful when approaching the end of the game. The machine is happy to auto-start a new one when you’ve passed the requisite ten frames. Cha-ching. (In relative bowling terms.)

Most shocking of all: You can now choose “bumpers” that rise up out of the gutters to keep your worst balls bouncing back-and-forth across the lane all the way down to the pins. No more poodles! You have to work hard not to hit something with this kind of technology.

But you probably know this already, because from my sister’s laughter as I extolled the wonders of the modern bowling alley, I’m sure I’m the last person on earth who thought bowling scores are still kept on paper.

Oh for the pinpoint of the sharpened pencil on a sheet of neat-and-tidy frames. Oh for smoke-yellowed signs that admonish bowlers: “Please don’t loft the ball” and “Only two practice frames, please.” Now a never-ending display of tacky computer graphics at your seat show your score while overhead wide-screens comment on your performance, shouting, (inexplicably) “Open!!!” after every ball.

On the other hand, it is still bowling. Take a look at “House Ball.” Nothing has changed with that heavy-composite technology. You still have to hold it close as you set your mind against those almost-human-shaped pins. You still have to calculate which mid-lane arrows you want your ball to cross on the way to the sweet spot right between pins one and three.

And, for three sweet pre-teen girls, bowling is still kind of about bowling but really about funky shoes, pitchers of pop and candy machines with handfuls of tootie fruitie candies for a quarter. They don’t miss what they never knew. *Sigh.*