Bowling with Brendan

Tonight was "Mommy-Son" date night. Brendan and I went bowling. This was his first time and it had been many, many years since I had bowled, so it was an adventure for us both.

Have any of you been bowling lately? Bowling has changed since the 1990s at the Wilk. They have AUTOMATIC bumpers. They popped up for Brendan and went down when it was my turn. They also have fancy animated balls and pins acting out strike/spare/gutter/etc. on the overhead screen. But the rental shoes still stink.

I wish I had a picture so you could see Brendan in his little size 11 bowling shoes, hugging his six-pound bowling ball. He loved that ball. As soon as it came out of the machine, he grabbed it and held it until it was his turn. First he tried bowling the regular way, with one arm. Too heavy. Then he switched to the "granny", setting the ball on the ground and giving it a big underhanded push. That worked better, but the ball still rolled so slowly down the lane that he got bored waiting to see if it would hit anything.

Once as I was starting my steps towards the lane, he yelled "Go Lisa!" Hearing him call me Lisa caught me completely off guard. My ball went straight into the gutter.

One other new thing is a little light and buzzer that go on when you "scratch" or step over the line. Brendan thought that was pretty fun. When he didn't set it off as he rolled the ball, he would stomp on the line to set it off. He later described it as a "buzzer that doesn't shock you".

I'm proud to be able to say that even though I did not get to use bumpers, I still won. By an amazing score of 69 to 67. I taught Bren the meaning of "gutter ball", since I was the only one who had one (or maybe a few more than one).