Rob Krider Going Bowling

I came home from work, kicked open the front door, and make an announcement: "Tonight, we're going bowling." The kids jumped for joy. Of course, they had never been bowling before, so they wouldn't know if it was something worth getting excited about or not. They just wanted to get out of the house and avoid homework. Had I walked in the door and said, "Tonight, we're going to a beheading," they sill would have jumped for joy.

Before we left, I told everyone first rule of bowling: make sure they had on a good pair of socks. It seemed like such a simple request at the time, but then again, finding a matching pair of socks at my house is like climbing Mr. Everest and finding the Holy Grail all at once. You have to brave the enormous, never-ending mountain of laundry that decorates our house during all four seasons. Once you have dug through two tons of clothes, you are lucky if you find even a single sock, and it is usually a baby sock from when our kids were infants, which was more then four years ago. Only one person in our house has the superhuman powers to detect and locate a pair of socks. That's Mom. Using her "mother sonar," she located four pairs of socks in one minute and 16 seconds, each pair matching, and all without holes. It was amazing.

We jumped into the car and headed across town to the bowling alley. Everyone was excited about bowling. As we were driving, my wife, whom I love, asked me if I had called ahead to make sure there was available lane. I toke her not to worry about it because nobody bowls on a Tuesday night. When we arrived, my kids ere running through the parking lot, talking a mile a minute in anticipation of their new adventures in the unknown world of bowling. We entered through the front door and immediately heard the sounds of balls hitting wood lanes and pins being knocked over. My kids' faces lit up. They were going to love this. That is when I found out it was League Night.

It seems like every night is League Night. Why don't they just call it what it is: League Year. The crazy part about League Night is half of the lanes are dark and empty, but I still can't seem to get one. There was no way I was going to shatter my kids' dreams of gutter balls and ugly shoes because of some stupid League Night. I pleaded with the manager, who was maybe 17 years old if this birthday was yesterday.

"Son, I can't expect you to understand this because your momma still makes you PBandJ and puts it in a brown bag with your name on it before you go to school every morning. But I got two kids here, and I promised them they could go bowling, and if there is anything you could do to help me out, I would really appreciate it. Plus, if we can't bowl, my wife is going to say to me, 'I told you so,' and I just can't cope with that, if you know what I mean."

This kid either felt pity on me, or I scared him to death. I'm not really sure which. Either way, he told me if I came back in half an hour, there might be a lane open. So in 30 minutes, we wither would be bowling, or the police would be there waiting for me. I had half an hour to kill to find out. There was only one thing that was going to keep my wife and kids from eating me alive for the half-hour delay. "Who wants ice cream?" fortunately for me, my wife loves treats as much as the kids do. Ice cream has gotten me out of a lot of marital jams.

Once the kids' hands were completely sticky with ice cream, and our lane was open, we gave them each bowling balls and told them to go for it. My daughter is only 5, and she looked like and Olympic heavyweight lifter trying to get the ball up out of the ball return and over to the lane. She dropped the ball straight down on the lane, and five minutes later, it meandered down toward the pins where it bounced back toward us. My son use this strange wind-up technique, where he squatted down and rocked the ball back and forth ten times before dropping it straight down and letting it roll painfully slow toward the pins. Whatever the method, fun and nachos were being had at the bowling alley.

The cool part about this bowling alley was the automated kid bumpers along the sides of the lanes, which kept all of the rookie shots out of the gutters. The bumpers were controlled by a computer and would go up and down, depending of the bowler on the scoreboard. My wife was complaining that she needed the bumpers too. I was careful not to agree with her, even thought I definitely agreed with her. Usually when I play games with my kids, I lose on purpose. But with the kid bumpers up for the young ones and me playing at my best, which I'm sorry to say is sad, my kids were genuinely beating the pants off me. At the end of the night, the kids beat Mom and Dad, and the whole family was hooked on the sport of bowling. I don't know if it was the game itself, or if it was the nachos that my kids liked so much, but we knew we would be back someday. Then again, with those damn League Nights, maybe we won't.

Rob bowls about as consistently as Oprah diets. Copyright.