Bwling

Bowling's been on our mind a lot lately. First, we tried the bowling out on the Wii. Gamble was having a little trouble coordinating the buttons with the swinging, so I tabled it.

It was interesting to note, however, how he pronounced the word. When he says it, it sounds a little like "booling", but not exactly. It sounds like he's gotten rid of the "o" entirely, pronouncing it more like the oddity "cwm", which is an actual English word (see Wikipedia), for example. When he says it, I see it as "Bwling" in my mind.

Then his sports class had a week of bwling. He really had a good time with the little plastic ball and pins, though my knees were not thanking me for being the pin monkey. And he kept wanting to do it again on his last night of sports class (which was an open gym type thing).

Last night, however, Nicole was taking Random out to dinner with her and a friend, so I had time with Gamble. He really needed the attention, so I thought I'd try taking him to real bowling (keep it in the States. Never mention "real bowling" in the context of tenpin American bowling, or you'll get drawn into a discussion of how the rest of the world calls soccer "football", how American football is just pansified Rugby with breaks for adverts for a sugary watery substance that this country calls "beer", and the arrogance of having a "World Series" of baseball for teams within a single country. You've been warned). I mean bowling with big balls and ten wooden pins, painted white with red stripes.

I found an alley that had open bowling as well as gutter bumpers, which increase fun for the younger crowd, as well as come in handy for the occasional ricochet spare pickup.

Bottom line: Gamble had a blast, and so did I.

He got a regular-sized 6 pound ball and experimented with both the between the legs push and the "hammer throw" methods of ball delivery. They were both similarly successful, and neither delivered the power that would consistently carry all the way through the pins. It was really amusing to see the ball slowly knock down the two and the four pin, only to be stopped dead in its tracks by the seven pin.

Gamble's highest score for one ball for the night was eight pins, which is typical for me, so I expect he'll be beating me soon. His most interesting leave was the unlikely 8-9-10 split, which also led to his highest frame score of the night, as he picked up the 9-10 of this split, narrowly missing the 8.

We bowled three whole games, and at the end of it, he wanted to keep bowling. Me? My whole hand was sore and ready to blister. We should do this more often.

Afterwards, we went to McDonald's. The last time we'd been to the one across from the bowling alley, they'd taken out the playplace. When we got there, they had a brand new one. On telling him that they had a playplace, he started repeating "YES!" and asked, "Know why I'm yelling 'YES!'? Because I love the playplace.

He had a great night overall, and I can't wait to do it again with him.