Birthday Bowling

The day started off with a trip to Wal-Mart to buy Elijah a new bike.  I lobbied to get him a $1700 carbon fiber triathlon racing monster, but we opted for something that didn’t reflect my own penis insecurities.

I’d love to take the time to crap all over Wal-Mart, but the place was clean, didn’t smell of dead things and the people were nice.  So there, everyone on the internet.

I worried a bit that Elijah would pick out a weirdo bike.  Because he’s a weirdo.  I overplayed my hand a bit my shouting, “Ooh!  That bike looks like a motorcycle!  And doesn’t have pictures of ponies!”

He picked out a really cool blue number that had those little BMX metal pegs on the side of the wheels for tricks and for removing skin from your dad’s shins.  After the very nice Wal-Mart guy hoisted the bike down, I noticed a few of the parts were pretty loose.  I could see an empty tool box and a full swear jar in my future.

A few hours later we arrived at the Skokie Bowling Alley.  We invited Di’s family, Steve’s family and our neighbors and Kitty.  All of whom didn’t seem to care Eli’s birthday party was on Easter Sunday.

All of the other bowling attendees also didn’t seem to care it was Easter Sunday.  We were the only non Hasidic Jewish people there.  But man, they can roll.

You know who else can roll?  Diana.  She destroyed me.  Bam bam bam.  She killed those poor little pins. 

Manhood, destroyed, I focused on the kid alley.  Whoever invented bumper bowling deserves a medal.  The little guys and gals had a blast, and with the elimination of gutter balls, they racked up the scores until they got bored and went to the game area.

A quick note on the game area.  Cousin Finn, that beautiful timid boy, hit the jackpot on some game and got 1,000 prize tickets.  He did not take my suggestion to turn them in for 1,000 erasers.

As I said in the last post, the pizza gorging on top of a firm bed of jelly beans ended up being too much for Eli and he barfed all over the place when we got home.

But I believe there is no better indicator of birthday success.