One of my 6 year old’s best friends from his pre-school years had his 7th birthday party at the local bowling alley. His parents asked him who all he wanted to invite to his party, and he said just his two best friends from pre-school. So it was three 6-year-old boys and two dads (the third dad didn’t stay) on lane #4.

Boys can be so silly. They got so excited with every bowl, by the graphics on the game monitor, by the pizza from the alley concession counter, by just feeding off each other’s excitement. An excited boy with a six-pound bowling ball can be dangerous to everyone around him. It took constant reminders to keep the two waiting boys behind the bowling area while the one whose turn it was handled his ball. They all wanted to be right together, talking about what just happened, what is happening, and what will happen with the ball and pins.

I’m amazed at the strength of the bowling lane floors. We tried to keep the boys from just throwing and dropping their balls on the wood, but still, that floor took constant punishment. And our boys weren’t the only ones pounding the balls on the floor—there was a regular drum beat of balls smashing into the floors from all the other kids in the building that day.

To bowl, each of the boys would carry their ball up to the line and drop, toss, or hurl the ball. Occasionally the ball would roll pretty fast, but most of the time it just meandered down the wood floor, bouncing off the rails blocking the gutters.

One time, my boy threw his ball down the lane in a zig-zag pattern; it bounced off the rails at least half a dozen times, and he still managed to knock down eight pins. He would never watch his ball go down the lane. He’d set it to rolling, and then just turn around and walk away. He was only interested in the act of bowling, and apparently didn’t care too much in the result. He’d have his ball in hand (or sitting on it) before it was his turn to bowl; he was anxious to fling the ball, he just apparently didn’t care too much about watching the pins fall.

I think all three boys enjoyed the reunion, though it wasn’t quite what you’d consider a “party.” There were cupcakes and presents, but it really was just three “old friends” (yes, I realize the humor in this concept regarding 6 year olds) getting together for some old-school silly time.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

The other evening, I found a handwritten note in my 3 year old’s lunchbox, stuck to his unopened package of peanut butter Ritz Bits:

Sorry [3YO] couldn’t eat them. We gave him Goldfish : )

I had made his lunch that morning, and I forgot there was a child with peanut allergies in his class. I packed his lunch bag with some rolled up ham slices and pepperoni (he loves pepperoni), some sliced grapes, an apple juice box, and the snack bag. We usually give him a package of Cheez-Its for his classroom snack, but I put the last package of those in the 6 year old’s lunch that morning. So I just grabbed the next bag of snacks in the cupboard.

The peanut restriction completely slipped my mind. In fact, after I saw the note, it was a few moments before I realized why he “couldn’t eat them.” Interesting, though, I’m now so in the habit of making the ham and pepperoni roll ups for his lunch, I didn’t remember why we started packing that instead of a peanut butter sandwich, like we pack for the 6 year old.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I had just dropped off the 6 year old at school, and I hadn’t had any breakfast yet. So, instead of going directly back home, I turned the van toward Biscuitville. The 3 year old was full of questions.
“Where are we going now?”
“Where is mom?”
“Why are we going this way?”
“What is the name of this road?”
“What is the name of this store?”
On and on and on and on. . . .

On the way, I called my wife to ask if she wanted anything from the restaurant. We went through the drive-through, where I ordered an egg biscuit for me, a bowl of grits and a medium Mountain Dew for my wife. The 3 year old didn’t want anything—I asked him if he was sure, twice.

When I got my order, the guy at the window handed me a bucket of MD. Good lord, I thought, this cup is big enough for movie theater popcorn. It’s been happening for years, this increase in drink sizes, but it still catches me by surprise. A medium today is the size of what would have been considered extra large 20 years ago. And to add a little bit of sad irony to the trend, when I order a water at a fast food restaurant, I inevitably get a little child-sized cup mostly full of ice. It’s like they’re trying to make sure you get more than plenty of caffeinated sugar-drink, but they want to keep you thirsty for good, healthy water.

Anyway, I set the barrel of MD in the cup holder between the front seats. The cup is smaller at the bottom so it can fit in car cup holders. This makes it very top heavy—something that didn’t really seem important at that moment.

When I pulled out of the parking lot, turning left onto the highway, the cup jumped out of the holder and into the passenger seat. I quickly reached over to catch the cup, and managed to just barely get my fingers on it. When I looked back up, out the windshield, I saw I was about to hit the right-side curb. I had to jerk the steering wheel with my left hand, and this renewed momentum to the extra-large “medium-sized” cup of Mountain Dew, and it flew out from under my fingers and into the passenger-side door. It wedged between the seat and the door, but the plastic top popped off, and 50 gallons of ice and green liquid all poured out into the floor.

As soon as I could, I pulled off into a parking lot. I got out of the van and walked around to the passenger side. When I opened the door, MD and ice fell out like sports gear in an over-stuffed closet. Nice. Just great. Sigh, double sigh, and cuss (under my breath because the 3 year old was watching).

“What happened daddy?”
“Where are we?”
“Why did you get out of the van?”
“What are you doing?”
“I want a biscuit.”

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I’ve come across three damaged DVDs from our nearest Blockbuster store in two weeks. We rented Toy Story two weeks ago to show our boys, but when I put it in the player, the feature movie wouldn’t play. We could watch all the previews, but not the movie we actually wanted to see. When I returned the DVD to the store and told them the problem, the clerk credited my account for the rental. We got something else several days later.

A couple of days ago, I rented another movie, for myself to watch, and it froze up at the last 10 minutes. I took the movie back and told them the problem. Again the clerk credited my account, but this time I got another movie right away. I watched the new movie that night, but again, it flaked out half way through and skipped a chapter. I could watch the rest of the movie, fine, but just couldn’t see that one chapter.

I had tried all three movies in our main DVD player and in my computer DVD player to make sure the problem wasn’t our player. I got the same error in both machines.

When I returned the second movie, I asked the clerk if they test the DVDs when someone tells them there’s a problem. The clerk told me that they did not test them, and that they just throw the disc out and get a replacement.

When I returned the third movie, I told the clerk that this was the second movie in a row I had rented that had an error (the first movie from two weeks ago slipped my mind at that moment). I asked if they could test the disc just to make sure the situation was actually the disc and not my electronics. He said they don’t have a DVD player in the store, other than the one that plays the preview videos on all the monitors hanging around in the store.

That’s odd. I remember back before DVDs, when Blockbuster rented VHS cassettes, they had players in the store. I remember returning one or two tapes with errors, and they checked them as I stood there telling them where the error occurred.

Now I’m going to have to play one of my personally owned DVD movies just to check that my players are working properly and hasn’t been causing the problems I’ve experienced with rented discs. I can’t imagine that my players would mess up in the same place on three perfectly good discs, but I wouldn’t have imagined getting three broken discs from Blockbuster within a two week period, either.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com