Bowling Lessons
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Monday, March 15, 2010 10:51 PM
Babies are easily amused, which is useful. At Mass last week, I amused Blaise for half an hour with a tube of lip balm and an errant sock I found in the diaper bag. Put the tube in the sock, then dump it out… he was mesmerized.
The downside to this is that while it can be fun to take babies on outings, it often feels a bit pointless. Yes, we could pack up the baby and spend the day doing something expensive like going to the zoo, but he seems just as excited when I give him free rein in my cupboard full of plastic containers. Bonus: we already own the cupboard and the containers, so that particular amusement costs nothing!
I am loving having an older child, though, because of that Zoo-Amusement factor. Camilla is still mildly interested in the plastic containers, and she’ll stay busy for quite a while if she has access to a mud puddle and a stick to stir it with, but she’s also starting to realize that there’s a world out there full of fascinating things. And she wants to see them all.
Recently she found out what bowling is. She was immediately fixated, especially once she found out kids can do it. Every day she asked my husband to tell her again about bowling. She wanted to go. Bryan, who is wrapped firmly around Camilla’s small pinky finger, agreed immediately. I was game, so we figured out a time that it would work, arranged to leave the baby with my sister and bring my nephew - Camilla’s best friend who is also three - along with us. Saturday morning, we bowled.
The friendly guy behind the counter at the bowling alley outfitted us and sent us to lane 40, the one down on the very end. I was confused - the place was nearly empty - but I figured it out about ten minutes later. Camilla’s second ball, thrown by a thirty-pound person and obeying those pesky laws of physics, came to a standstill about ten feet from the end of the lane. Since we were on the end, the employee who came to rescue the ball trotted right down the maintenance lane next to the wall. Convenient!
I pictured new bowling-alley employees being trained. “If the customer can’t see over the counter? Send ‘em to lane forty!”
I learned a few lessons from bowling with two energetic three-year-olds: When they ask if you want one game or two, say one! One is [almost more than] enough. Bowling shoes themselves are still ugly in toddler sizes, but somehow manage to make the kids themselves look cuter. Bowling balls, previously fairly innocuous objects, suddenly become Globes of Doom when you must keep small people from dropping them on small toes.
But the most important lesson came from the children themselves. They were so excited, bounding around in their hideous little shoes, asking over and over, “Is it my turn yet?” At one point Daniel, overcome with impatience, put the six-pound child-sized bowling ball on the floor and sat on it, as if that might make his turn come faster. (This annoyed Camilla, as she was actually up next.)
As much as they couldn’t wait to push the ball down the lane, though, they paid no attention to what happened once it was going. My husband and I were watching the scoreboard, mildly interested in our own scores. (Thanks to the bumpers, Bryan scored a personal best!) We kept trying to get the kids to watch and count how many pins their balls knocked down, but they just didn’t care. In between turns, they’d discovered that the chairs at the table near our lane could swivel! And there was a ball-holding stand in a nearby corner that they could run and hide behind! Also floor was unusually polished and provided an excellent place to slide around on small bottoms - nearly magical!
We shook our heads, thinking that three-year-olds are too young to “get it” when it comes to bowling. Maybe in a few years they’ll figure out the scoring part. Too bad.
On the drive home, though, as we listened to the happy chatter of two kids who’d had a wonderful time, I suddenly realized we were looking at it wrong. I got one strike while we were bowling, Bryan got a few spares and a strike, and those were the highlights of our bowling experience. For Daniel and Camilla, the whole experience was one long highlight. The chance to push the ball, plus the swively chairs and the smooth floors and the hide-and-seek corner - they loved every minute of it.
I’m not about to get down on my rear and slide around on a bowling alley floor, however well-polished. But I do want to be like my daughter and her cousin when we took them bowling. In every part of my life, I want to be able to ignore the scoreboard and enjoy the details. I want to wring all the goodness from every gift God gives me, however small. I want that joy.
This is why I love having a three-year-old. I’m convinced if I pay attention, she can help me learn how to get it.
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