This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 4:03 am and is filed under Humor, Pictures, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
If you have young children and you haven’t thought about bowling – at least once – you’re really missing out on a great opportunity for a fun family activity, a hooting good time, and quite a few laughs. Unlike normal bowling, no alcohol is required to make this a fun afternoon for all. My strongest recommendation is to bring your camera, because as you can see there are a multitude of opportunities for some great photos.
Our effort started with Sofi’s recent interest in trying to play the bowling game that came with the Nintendo Wii. She understood the premise, but the button combinations required to get things going were just too complex for her age. So we thought, what the heck, they have bumper bowling, how tough could it be? Little did we know that all the work would be in our hands or how much fun it could be.
Both of the girls were extremely excited. Unfortunately, they didn’t have shoe rentals in their size, so they played in their regular shoes. In retrospect that’s probably for the best – the tacky rubber was slippery enough when a foul occurred.
Here’s what I learned:
1. A six pound ball is still heavy to a two year old.
2. Trying to hold a two year old and throw a 6 pound ball is more difficult if you’re not throwing the two year old, too. Throwing the two year old with the ball is much easier.
3. Bowling lanes are slope downward only so much. A ball must be rolled with sufficient force to get it to the end of the lane. Without enough force a person must come from behind the register, tightrope his way down the small area between two lanes, and push the ball the remainder of the way.
4. Getting the ball to the end of the lane does not necessarily mean that whatever you’ve accomplished by knocking down pins will automatically be recorded. A certain amount of force is required to trigger the pin counting/automated scorecard. Fortunately, the ball returns either way and there is a button that can trigger the mechanism. Note: this does make it possible to roll the ball (albeit slowly) down the lane several times without it “counting” against you. Thus a child of two can actually get a strike on their scorecard.
5. Children don’t care about their score or how many frames they’ve bowled. Quite honestly, I don’t think they care if they hit any pins at all. They do, on the other hand, care about the color of the ball that they’re using. They do care that you’re smiling and laughing and giving them a high-five when they come even remotely close to pushing the ball in the right direction.
6. Most importantly – I learned that bowling with my family can be a lot of fun.
Papa
