Well, I’ve been to my second bowling birthday party in less than a month with my oldest, and it’s been quite an experience.
The most recent one was earlier today, at the local bowling alley (which might be closing to make room for the ever-expanding department store of the area, but that’s another story). Since this was a classmate of my girl’s, many of her friends from school were there, and I was amazed at what happens when you put about fifteen or twenty six-year-olds in a bowling alley with loud indecipherable dance music playing.
Apparently, bowling is a contact sport when you’re that young. Kids were throwing themselves at each other, often before someone was about to toss (and yes, I do mean that – toss!) an eight-pound ball down the lane. They were also dancing around, and chasing one another, and even running down the lane.
Wanna know why you’re not supposed to do that? Watch a six-year-old do it, and you’ll see. Because the lanes are oiled, they are slippery, and more than a few of our party slid down, thinking it was cool and fun. And no one was trying to reprimand their children for doing this. Someone from the bowling alley finally said something, near the end of the afternoon, but of course what was the point then? I reigned my girl in – she never went down the lane, which she knew was wrong, and when she was running around I stopped her. Because she likes to bowl, she was interested in the game, so that helped.
I don’t understand how the moms – and there were mostly moms there, with about two other dads there besides me – could just sit there and talk as these kids went totally nuts like this. I don’t mean that they can’t get all excited, and I know their minds are not going to be on the game, but this was really chaotic and even dangerous. I almost felt bad for the staff, who had to clean up this mess afterward, but they seemed fairly indifferent and so it was hard for me to offer them my condolences on the job ahead of them as we began to file out from the party.
The adults mainly just allowed the kids to run all around and took some pictures and once in a while pulled someone over and said something. But basically the bowling alley – or our section of it – was turned into a wrestle-mania/dance-hall/free-for-all for about two hours.
I don’t think I’d want to do a bowling party for my girls until everyone was old enough to actually enjoy the bowling as well as the socializing. I love to go bowling, and I love taking my oldest with my nephew, just us three, but this last party was too much for me. I had to take an advil when I got home! I was going to write about wondering where the fathers were on this Saturday, but it seems to me that they had the good sense not to be around. Maybe they had the younger children – I know some of them did – and they have no idea how lucky they were.
Now, I’m still the parent in our household who’s going to the bowling parties, let me be clear. You never know if one team needs a little extra help!