That word takes me back to the 1960s and the bowling show Beat The Champ on WWJ-TV, Channel 4 in Detroit. Don Kremer and Chuck Walby hosted. I always had the impression Don Kremer used the word because he got tired of saying "bowler."

It ran after the Tonight Show. I had no interest in bowling but staying up late was a big deal to an insomniac teenager who liked odd words.

Now cough!

I remember sportswriters calling male professional bowlers as "keglers" when I was growing up. I wonder if lady bowlers were referred to as "keglettes" back then.

Any woman who could handle one of those heavy 10-pin bowling balls gets my respect.

The ladies' balls are almost certainly made of rubber around a cork center. Plastic balls became the dominant technology in the 1970s, followed by urethane in the 1980s, and resin in the 1990s. Changes to the interior of the ball, like blocks to alter weight distribution, became more sophisticated during that period of innovation. Scores rose with each change, and perfect "300" games are much more common today than when these ladies were bowling.

It's my impression that the pace of innovation has slowed in recent years, but I'm happy to be corrected by someone whose knowledge is more current.

Can you imagine if someone came up to these ladies in 1962 and asked them if they were going to "bust out some sick back-alley moves"? They might lean in closer, politely and quizzically, to get a repeat on what was surely a misheard question. Or they might look quizzically at one another, wondering where the strange questioner came from. Or they might be frightened by the implication that they’d be breaking anything or would be in any way unhealthy or prone to hanging out in insalubrious locations, and they might look about nervously for their husbands. How language changes in just 60 years. All those words are old but they can mean such different things now.

If "some sick back-alley moves" is one, what is the comparison you are implying?

[That's not a metaphor. "A river of tears" is a metaphor. - Dave]

Daughter & mother. I don't know enough about bowling to guess what their averages probably are. I hope they each have a custom bowling ball, cause they each deserve one.