Keep It Clean: Chicken Wings And Ribs Are Finger Foods, Not Bowling Foods | Matt Reigle

Certain foods are situational. Popcorn is never better than when you're at a movie theater and even a terrible hot dog tastes better if you are at a ballpark. However, to this point, BBQ ribs shouldn't be anywhere near a bowling alley.

I didn't think anyone would need to be told this, but alas, here we are.

My bowling career is far from extensive. I'm talking about a few birthday parties in my youth and a couple of hangouts with friends. That said, I know how to play. Although for the life of me, I can't understand how there are 10 frames of 10 pins, yet a perfect game is 300.

I don't care if that's how it's scored; having 100 as the perfect score is a missed opportunity.

Bowling! (Getty Images)

What I love about bowling is that it's one of those sports like golf. When played recreationally, drinking isn't just allowed; it's encouraged.

Hell, beer is practically a legal performance-enhancing drug. If you can get into that magical Goldilocks zone where the right amount of Coors Light, say hello to being an above-average athlete.

So, when my girlfriend and I were on a weekend vacation and our hotel had a bowling alley, I was all about getting ourselves a lane, a pair of shoes that I'm sure someone with some kind of fungal infection has also worn, and a big ol' pitcher of beer to do that bowling.

I put on my clown shoes while my girlfriend typed our names on the scoreboard. I told her I wanted to be "POO" or "ASS" but she said no). Once I was laced up — technically velcro-ed — I grabbed the menu.

You see, this was one of those fancy bowling alleys. One where instead of going up to a concession stand and having to carry your grub back to your lane, this was the kind of place where you flagged the server down and they delivered it straight to you.

Classy.

We hit the call button and for a pitcher of beer — a necessary bit of sustenance if I was going to crack a 100 — when the server asked if we wanted any food.

I wasn't hungry, but that never stopped me from ordering food before. So I thought, "What the hell?" and looked at the food menu.

Food at a bowling alley is already a weird idea. I'm not a germaphobe, but the idea of eating food just after sticking my fingers in communal bowling ball holes doesn't seem like the best idea.

Still, most of the time, they offer harmless fare like mozzarella sticks or chicken tenders.

Instead, what I saw horrified me. Specifically two items made me want to run out of the bowling alley screaming like I had just learned that Soylent Green was made of people: BBQ ribs and chicken wings.

Ribs! (Getty Images)

Now, I love both of those foods. I'm a believer that the reptilian part of our brain loves them because gawing meat straight from a bone puts us in touch with our caveman ancestors. However, both of those items are slathered in sauce. Sauce that gets on anything and everything that you touch. Even after you think you've cleaned your miss throughout with a postage stamp-sized Wet Ones-brand wet one.

I knew I had the wherewithal to forego saucy foods. I just didn't trust my fellow man to have the same. It's the same reason I always look both ways when I drive through an intersection. I shouldn't have to, but I simply don't trust others.

How was I to know for sure that the bowling ball I picked off the rack hadn't last been used by someone who didn't see the problem with ordering ribs or chicken?

I didn't. That sent a chill down my spine.

Before every throw, a thought in the back of my head reminded me that someone slob's saucy digits may have been in there too. Digits that they may have "cleaned" with a quick, vain pass with a napkin or a few licks.

That torrent of thoughts threw me off my game in a big way.

Suffice it to say, my bowling performance was less than stellar. The prepared remarks I had drawn up to give to the newspaper if I bowled a perfect game were far from necessary.

I was dismayed that we live in an age where people think saucy foods and bowling could coexist.

Upon relaying this story to others I was dismayed to learn that this very thing had been explored on the most recent season of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

Blink and you'll miss it, but at around the 12-second mark, Danny DeVito's Frank is housing some chili cheese fries out of a bowling ball.

So the unsavory link between sloppy foods and bowling could not be more in the public consciousness. It's not like DeVito did that on an episode of Taxi. That episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia premiered last month!

You'd think that the folks drawing up bowling alley menus would make that call on their own. They're the ones that have to mop spilled BBQ sauce off the hardwood and pick dried Tabasco gunk out of every single Brunswick bowling ball in the place.

Until bowling across the realize that are complicit in one of society's biggest problems, we must bowl in fear. Fear of getting our hands sticky from some other slob's residual sauce.

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