They don't worry about throwing gutter balls, even those who aren't more than 5 years old and sling the ball with two hands before sprawling to the floor.
There are bumpers that allow the ball to carom from side to side while making its way slowly toward the pins.
Nor do they have to know how to keep score, which used to be an excellent way to sharpen basic math skills. Scorekeeping is computerized.
But if you've been in a bowling center in recent years, you know that none of this is new.
What's new is something called "Cosmic Bowling.''
It started with the lights dimming and the pins and the lanes eerily glowing.
Then what appeared to be fog began pouring out of outlets above the pin pits.
The place got darker, and suddenly lasers began projecting psychedelic patterns on the walls, floor, ceilings and the bowling lanes.
Simultaneous with the visual effects was an explosion of rock music from high-quality sound speakers.
I can't tell you what the songs were, except that most appeared to be from the 1960s and '70s, the sort that were sung by the extremely hefty women with ear-splitting voices who provided most of the music at the recent Democratic convention.
When the visual and audio effects were going full blast, what had been an ordinary contemporary bowling center was changed into a combination bowling joint and rock concert.
And even more startling than the music, lasers and glow-in-the-dark pins and lanes was the transformation of the bowlers--especially the kids and the adult females.
It was as if they had receive a sudden jolt of energy. Instead of picking the ball off the return rack, setting up, trying to hook the ball toward the 1-3 pocket, then walking back and looking pleased or dejected, they began wiggling, shimmying, strutting and high-fiving each other.
When a song that I assume to have been macarena music came on, they all began waving their arms and tapping various body parts like baseball coaches signaling for a hit-and-run or a bunt. Or someone afflicted with a bad case of the crabs.
Having spent countless hours in the Congress Lanes and the Cermak Lanes as a pinsetter, foul-line referee and assistant manager (gofer), this was unlike anything I had seen.
In fact, I once spent a day working on a story in what used to be known as Dunning, a state mental hospital, and I didn't see any behavior that looked quite like the gyrating bowling crowd.
It used to be that bowlers were sturdy-looking guys with cigar stubs clamped in their mouths or broad-beamed women with beehive hairdos who went about the game in a businesslike way.
Never before did I see a bowler joyously leap or wriggle about like some damn-fool football player who had just caught a ball or given an opponent a knee injury that would cripple him for life.
These self-congratulatory antics were especially inappropriate after missing a simple one-pin spare or dropping the ball on a foot.
Sitting nearby were a couple of graying guys waiting for a lane to open so they could bowl.
Since they appeared to be contemporaries, I walked over, introduced myself and asked them what they thought of Cosmic Bowling.
"Hurts my ears,'' one of them said. "I don't think Andy Varipapa would have cared much for it,'' referring to an oldtime bowling great who could pick up spares not only on his lane but those on either side.
"But they turn it off in a little while, and the bar still sells beer, so everything's OK with me. And look how crowded the place is. It's good for business, and that's good.''
Indeed, it was good for business. When I gathered my young group and went to the counter to pay the tab, the guy gave me the numbers.
I looked in my wallet, counted the cash, then took out a piece of plastic.
That, I decided, was a far worse development than the fat singers with the pain-inducing voices.
As we left, one of the kids said: "Boy, it would have been even better with balls that glow in the dark. The guy at the counter said they sell them. Maybe next time . . .?''
Forget it. I am not a reactionary. But there are limits.
