‘Jimmy Dunne Says’

Bowling Balls

He grew up on the rough side of a New Jersey town.

Short, scrappy, the first over the boards when hockey fights broke out.

By senior year in high school, he was flunking classes, running with the wrong crowd and dabbling in dealing.

The chip on his shoulder did most of the talking.

One night after midnight, he and two buddies were in the town’s bowling alley, stole a bowling ball.

Because anger wanted an audience—heaved one through the front window of a small corner house in his neighborhood.

The shock of glass, then the sprint home.

This old guy lived there. He’d always come out on his front porch barking at the kids to stop cutting across his lawn on their way to high school.

Late the next afternoon, there was a knock. That old man stood in the doorway, the stolen bowling ball in his hands.

“I saw you,” he calmly said, looking him smack in the eyes. “You’re going to pay for the window.

“You’ll wash my car every Sunday until it’s covered. It’s our secret. I’m not telling the cops. I’m not telling your parents,” he said. “This stays between us … unless you walk away.

“Deal?”

He added one more thing.

“I spoke to our priest. He said, ‘Lead with mercy. Expect more.’ I’m choosing both.”

They started that Sunday.

Bucket, sponge, chrome, silence. Then talk. The old man asked real questions and listened to real answers.

He didn’t sermonize; he sketched next steps. “Here’s the math teacher who’ll stay late. Here’s a foreman who’ll hire you if you show up on time. Here’s a new draft of your resume.”

Week after week, the car shone and the chip got lighter.

After a couple of months, he came by for the Sunday wash—and the front window wasn’t boarded up. The glass was back in.

He said to the kid while they were washing the car, “My wife died 10 years ago in a car crash. Drunk teenagers killed her.”

He looked at the window.

“When I looked out every day, all I saw was kids wrecking my lawn. My lawn,” he said.

“I looked out that window this morning—and saw you showing up. Walking right across the thing,” he said. “Best feeling in the whole world.”

The kid made up credits, applied to a local college, found night shifts and kept going. The first small business worked, then a bigger one. He moved west, married a woman he adores, has three kids who know how to shake hands and look people in the eye.

On Tuesdays, he volunteers with court-referred teens.

He keeps a bucket and sponge in his garage.

One act of quiet kindness—merciful, specific and paired with expectations—reset what was possible.

No headlines, no miracles.

Just a different boundary, a different path and a life that now spills forward into other lives.

We’ve all had bowling balls and broken windows. That shatter everywhere.

Maybe the trick is—what we do next.

Jimmy Dunne is a modern-day Renaissance Man; a hit songwriter (28 million hit records), screenwriter/producer of hit television series, award-winning author, an entrepreneur—and a Palisadian “Citizen of the Year.” You can reach him at j@jimmydunne.com or jimmydunne.substack.com.