Strike!!

My parents were avid bowlers.  I remember being very young and spending a lot of time at the bowling alley in Angleton, reading comic books while they bowled.  We had one of those old, massive tv sets in our front room, and it was covered with trophies, both from his kart racing days and from all the bowling tournaments he and mom had won over the years.  As Dad got older, he continued to play whenever the opportunity arose, and he always did pretty well.

Sometimes, when we would fly up to Indiana to visit them, we would go bowling.  And he would kick our butts.  It was crazy.  He continued doing well even when his sight started to fail due to the side effects of some medication.  This mystified me, but I had learned over the years to expect Dad to find ways to overcome most obstacles.  I asked him about it after he just finished beating me.  Again.

"Well, you know I can't see the pins no more, but I never looked at the pins no ways.  You see them little arrows on the floor over there?" he gestured at the lane, and I looked over and saw what he meant.  "They tell you where the ball's gonna go, so I just use them.  Now, I can't see them neither, but I know where they are."  In his late 70's, the man was blind as a bat and was still a better bowler than me.

A Simple Solution

I was sitting at the table, eating breakfast, and my Dad was reading the newspaper in his usual seat.  It was a quiet, ordinary morning.  I'm pretty sure I was eating Froot Loops at the time.  Mom had already been up, made breakfast for herself and Dad, and then disappeared into the bedroom to do whatever Mom did back there in the morning.  It was a nice, quiet time.  Some minutes later, my Mom came walking slowly down the hall with an odd look on her face, her right arm held out like a German salute, her left hand probing her right shoulder.  She started rotating that arm in little circles.  Apparently, something in that shoulder was bothering her.

"Dad?" she asked, a certain amount of concern in her voice.

"Mm-hmm?" he replied without looking away from his paper.  When she didn't respond right away, he let his paper drop and looked up at her, only to see her standing there, still moving her outstretched arm in little circles.

"It hurts when I do that," she said, a pained expression on her face.

Dad paused for a few seconds and then looked at me.  I could see in his face that he'd been waiting for this moment for a looooong time.  He turned back to her.

"Well, don't do that," he replied, just as straight-faced as he could manage. 

Mom glared at him and then turned to walk back to the bedroom, still moving her arm in those little circles.

That's when he busted out laughing.  He laughed so hard that his face turned purple and I thought I might have to resuscitate him, which would have been difficult since I was laughing as well.  Dad was always one for finding the simplest way to solve a problem.

Ok, so maybe you had to be there, but Dad and I thought this was hilarious.  Mom did not.