Sometimes life can throw you some
curve balls. It can be a crushing sense of defeat if you wallow in all the
things that have gone wrong. And believe me, yes, I know. The tone on the blog
has been a little doom and gloom lately. Sue me. Four of our members were
killed because we stupidly forgot to lock a gate.
I guess some of the people were
starting to note that increasing sense of desperation and they decided to do
something about it. Now, I have to give 100% of the credit to Kanen and Yulonda
for this ingenious invention. As I have mentioned in the past, we have been
doing a lot of “industrial condensing” to keep the store managed. Obviously,
some aisles condense down more than others. We have barely put a dent in the
pet food aisle despite Kilo eating like a king. But 4A (canned vegetables,
non-refrigerated juice), 5A (baking), 6A (canned meat, pasta, soups) have been
diminishing down. And then there is 7A. Cereal, Pop-Tarts, Oatmeal, Coffee,
Peanut Butter and Jelly… Because the cereal is light and easy to move, we
basically cleaned out the entire aisle just to keep things from being so spread
out. That aisle has been empty for a while now and Kanen and Yulonda finally
found something to do with it.
Some of their early attempts and
incarnations during the planning stage were not genius ideas. At one point, I
know Kanen wanted to use frozen turkeys which as you will see would have been a
HUGE mistake. But, they had everyone drink up ten 2-liters of pop. With this
crew, it was not hard to do. They then peeled off all the labels and refilled them
approximately one-quarter of the way full with water to give them just enough
weight.
At the start of every summer season,
the store gets a shipment of those big inflatable rubber balls. Not like the
utility balls with the grips on them that “broinked” when you hit someone with
them. These are the smooth plastic balls with the swirling marble paint jobs on
them. Well, these things come in deflated for shipping purposes and then Robin
(RIP probably?) and Hobbit Judy would then inflate them with the small air
compressor that was kept in the circuit breaker room. Then they would all get
tossed in a big, giant bin and all the kids beg their moms and dads to buy them
one. (Hopefully you see where this is going now.)
Using some masking tape to mark the
spots on the floor of 7A, they measured out spots to set up the 2-liter “pins”
and then marked off a starting line that your foot could not go past. They then
proceeded to tape down lengths of those foam pool noodles to actually form
bumper gutters along the aisle so your throws would not get caught up in the
support struts. Using the dry erase board to keep score and a piece of poster
board to track progress at the end of the games, we officially started our own
bowling league.
The length of Aisle 7A is 68 feet with
is officially long enough to be regulation length but obviously, the weight of
the ball is not substantial enough for us to play within “regulation” lengths.
(This is part of the reason why Kanen wanted to use the frozen turkeys but,
c’mon, you can see that disaster potential all over the place.)
Again, it is something we can all do
together to have fun and take our minds off the atrocities of the real world…
if only for a little while…
