a bowling family...

"Guys, I think we are becoming a bowling family", Lyra (age 6) said.

She's right, she's totally right. I seriously did NOT see that coming. We went on a whim one afternoon during spring break after a week of parent guilt due to ignoring children to do 57,000 house projects. 

We rolled up on a Friday at 2:00pm to an empty lot and went inside.

It was as if the world had stopped in 1979- nothing, not one thing has been changed since then. The playlist was ridiculously awesome, so much so that dancing was required between turns. The shoes were older than God. They serve Mr. Pibb and curly fries. Trash talking that no one was able to back up flowed... along with skeptical teenagers quickly won over by the sheer cheesiness of everything. 

...and it turns out we are terrible at bowling, no one broke a 100... but I don't think anyone actually realized this because we played with bumpers and no one knows anything about bowling anyway. I don't even think anyone cares*. 

Can I tell you how wonderful it is to be awful at something, together, with the people you love most?  It is some sort of new togetherness nirvana. 

I think the world needs a whole lot more of that kind of togetherness, the kind where our environments rearrange our expectations, where we are taken outside of ourselves, where winning has a new definition...the kind where you walk out and proudly proclaim,

"We are a family of bowlers."  

*except Jack, Jack really cares, so just look for him on the pro tour some day.