And now my arm hurts!

Our school has a fundraiser/dance every year where the kids get to "bid" on a fun and exciting outing with their favorite teachers. We never usually participate in these outings because the autie kid so totally doesn't want to see any person having anything to do with school if he's not in school. This year, of course, the sooper social Kindergartener wanted to do fun stuff with his teacher and friends, so we signed him up for the bowling outing.

mmmmmmmmmmm. Boooooowwwwwwwwwwwwling.........

A lovely idea, I think! Plus it helps the school (in a practically unnoticeable way, but whatever) So, a few weeks ago, I dropped him off at the bowling alley with his teacher (whom I totally adore and will miss very much next year). What I didn't know, however, was that we were in the process of creating a monster.

A bowling monster. Did you even know those existed? I had no idea. Maybe they didn't until a few weeks ago??????

Suddenly, all this kid wanted to do was go bowling. It was all he could talk about. Time to go to bed? "When can we go bowling tomorrow?" Time to go to school? "When I get home can we go bowling?" Going to the store? "Can we go bowling first?" Last week I took him to a grocery store called The Berkeley Bowl. Man was HE disappointed.

So... of course... being the overindulgent suckers that we are, hubs and I have done quite a bit of bowling over the past few weeks.

I actually think the shoes are kind of cute.

The first time we went, I reluctantly agreed because I figured, at the very least, I could get a blog post out of it. So, I brought my phone and took notes and pictures. I hadn't been bowling in at least 20 years, and I don't think I've ever done it sober (even when I was a kid!) and here's the first thing I learned about bowling this time around: I suck at bowling.

Seriously. I'm really bad. Despite Child 2's continued cries of "YOU CAN DO IT, MAMA!" in my first game I bowled a 50. Child 1 bowled a 76. And he throws the ball overhand.

Look at that. Right in the middle. Overhanded.

Okay, well, the kids were using bumpers. Hubs says: "we can put up the bumpers for you. There's no shame in it."

Child 2 was full of helpful suggestions, like "Mama, try to get it in the sweet spot" and "maybe you should try a lighter ball?" and the obligatory "well, Mama, you gave it your best shot!"

Thanks, kid.

I think the low point, however, came when the people in the lane next to me piped in with their helpful suggestion: "Try to aim for the arrows." Yeah. Thanks. I am aiming for the fucking arrows.

And then when the bowling is all over? There's the arcade section of the bowling alley, where they pour millions of tokens into these stupid ass games so that they can get tickets which they exchange for crap. CRAP. Little plastic pieces of shit is what they get for the hundreds and thousands of tokens they vomit into those goddamn things. Did I mention bowling was expensive? Bowling is fucking expensive.

This 2 cent piece of plastic cost me $473.25

As we went on, though, I could tell that I was getting better at it. I felt much less awkward after the first few games, and once I realized that when you throw the ball, if you actually look at it, you can aim better... then my score improved. Not by much, though.

I'm pretty sure we're in for a long summer of bowling and plastic crap. Who wants to kill me???

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(Just for the record, bowling is actually quite fun. Not only is it fun, but it's the only activity that we've found so far that we can all do as a family because Child 1 loves it, too; and it's very rare that there's anything that they both love and want to do. So, in all seriousness, I'm actually happy to go bowling whenever they want. Despite what I've said about it... SHHHHHH.... don't tell anybody I said bowling was fun...... I don't want to ruin my rep......)

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