Our Journey to Carson

Bowling...Video Games...and a Lot of Pouting!

Our dear friends, Chris and Shannon, organized a Family Fun Night for members of our Sunday School class (Chris is our teacher) on Saturday night at a local bowling alley. Kevin and I were in a bowling league when we were newlyweds (hey, it was a cheap Saturday night out!) but it has been a L-O-N-G time since we've tried to bowl...a L-O-N-G time!! It ended up being Chris and Shannon and their girls, our friends Tim and Lisa and their family, and us...we had so much fun!!

Of course, ever the blogging geek that I am, my camera was at the ready. I only wish I had gotten a group shot! (Didn't think of it, actually!) When we showed Carson the ever stylish bowling shoes and told him he couldn't wear his "Spiderman boots" with 'em, he was "so es-sited!" But Daddy made a horrible, rookie mistake right after the shoes were put on...he let Carson play a video game.

I absolutely, utterly hate video games. Besides being disgusting germ repositories for every snot-nosed, no-I-didn't-wash-my-hands kid in the joint, they take kids away from "family" time and suck them into the dreaded "video game coma." Since this was family night, I didn't even want to open that can of worms. Daddy had different ideas. Of course, as soon as I saw it, I wanted to kill dear Daddy. (Kidding...sort of...)

The other problem is that, to Carson, TVs, videos, and electronics are an absolute utter addiction! He wakes up every morning asking to watch TV and spends the entire day, all the way to bedtime, continuing in his eternal quest for video stimulation. We have made the rule that if he asks, then the answer will be no...he is to wait for us to offer TV or a video. When he continues to ask, we say, "Carson, what is the rule?" His answer, invariably, is "Don't axe. Watch TV NOW??" Ugghhhh.... That obsession with all things video was launched with one video game...and created an ugliness in our little tunnel-visioned video addict that cannot be matched. He wanted to PLAY THAT GAME!

After letting Carson finish his game, I explained to him that we were at the party (which is what we were calling this outing to get him excited about it all day) to bowl, NOT to play with the games. He was SO angry with me. So, this is how our evening of bowling began:
Meggie brought her friends, Jacqueline and Morgan, along -- partly to have more fun bowling with her boring family and partly because we were dropping them at a real party after bowling was over:
Hey, Carson, it's time to bowl. Carson? Carson. CARSON!!!!
That would be a picture of Carson refusing to look at me 'cause he was mad at me. Sorry, Little Man, but I never promised you video games tonight -- and remind me to kill your Daddy when we get home tonight...

I finally convinced the Little Meany-Butt -- oops, I mean the Little Man -- to bowl. Here we have Mommy helping...and look at Morgan's excellent bowling form in the background!
In between being forced to take his turn, this is where Carson sat.
By the way, he is staring directly at the video game that he played earlier in the evening. When we turned his chair so the video game was not in his field of view, this is what we got:
And they say women are moody! Yikes! Meggie and her friends tried to cheer him up:
Wait, is that a smile?? Is it working???
Nope. He's back to being stone-faced and angry. Here, Morgan and Jacqueline are helping him bowl and trying to get him excited about his efforts:
Thanks, girls, but he's a lost cause at this point. I only took one more picture of bowling, this time with Daddy...
...then I put my camera away 'cause I'm fairly certain I was annoying everybody with my camera.

Much like Wendy's husband, Tim, Chris and I share a friendship based on mutual aggravation. We are very competitive -- not typically in sports, usually in wit -- and, let's face it, Chris, you don't always win. I wish I had gotten a picture of Chris and I sparring...it was the fun of the night! We bowled two games and, while I won't give the EXACT scores, let's just say I ended up "breaking 100" at the end of the first game (a typical goal for a bunch of pathetic bowlers, which we mostly were) and Chris did not. Again, without giving EXACT scores, I will tell you that my score was 35 pins higher than Chris' score. As we struggled neck-and-neck through the second game, the final score ended up with us BOTH "breaking 100" -- and Chris beat me by ONE STINKIN' PIN!! ONE!!

Chris couldn't stop himself -- he kept rubbing it in and irritating me so badly for winning by one stinkin' pin!! Ever the sweet, generous person that I am (yeah, right), I allowed him to continue in his manly swaggering as he rejoiced with a one-pin victory...knowing in my head that I (and many of the children, actually) thoroughly crushed him the first game. The male ego is so funny!! And Lisa crushed everybody (including all the men) the second game with a final score of 158!!!

By the way, Chris, I'm looking forward to your next Sunday School lesson on humility...