by Lorri Horn
“Oh, dear. Well let’s just let this one percolate, then, shall we?”
She patted him on the head and left him to “percolate,” evidently not even planning to finish their conversation before Archie’s text had interrupted them.
Break
“Want to come to my house for dinner?” Seraphina asked. “Elinor is having a sleepover. You guys can come hang out with us.”
They were all sitting on a warm bench in the sun together during nutrition.
“When?” Dewey asked.
“Saturday. Wanna?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“You Dewey,” Colin laughed.
“Ha, ha. Can you?”
“Can I Dewey it Saturday? I think I can.”
“Great! I’ll ask my parents. What should we do?”
Dewey rolled his eyes in anticipation.
“What should we Dewey?” Colin corrected.
“OMG. Stop.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s figure something out, though, or Seraphina will have us out collecting rocks.”
“You’re a little testy today,” she said.
“Nah. Hungry. Got anything?”
Dewey opened his backpack and pulled out a bag of sliced apples.
“Gimme.”
Dewey reached in the bag and handed him a couple slices.
“Thanks.”
“How about bowling?” Seraphina suggested.
“Yeah! Bowling. I haven’t done that since Whatshisface’s birthday party.”
“Silas? That was hilarious!” Dewey laughed. “Remember how Lukas dropped the bowling ball right in the middle of his cake?”
“Seriously?!” Seraphina looked up and stopped twisting her hair mid-twist.
“His mom went insane!” Colin laughed. “They served us squashed cake.”
“The bowling guy made Lukas wash the ball! Ah, that was great!”
“Okay, so we’re not inviting Lukas,” Seraphina said.
“What? No! He’s hilarious!”
“Seriously?”
“Maybe. Could be fun?”
“Hmm. Maybe.”
“Where’s Elinor?” Colin asked.
The bell always rang so much faster than any of them expected.
“Not sure,” Seraphina said standing up. “Text me later if your parents say yes.”
“I know I can. I might need a ride. Dewbert?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll ask.”
MTDIGS
One of the things Dewey loved most about bowling were the shoes. He loved the way the leather soles glided along the floor, slippery and smooth until the flat rubber heel brought you to a stop. But before Dewey could kick off his shoes and slide his feet into someone else’s rented ones, he had to figure out his game plan at Archie and Angelica’s.
Their mom seemed to give so much weight to the articles she read. What if she found out that what she was doing wasn’t good for kids? Or maybe herself?
Dewey did some searches online. “Annoying parents on Facebook.” “Moms who annoy kids on social media.” He found lots of information. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one with this problem. Now all he had to do was get Archie and Angelica to read or talk about these articles where she could overhear them and see if that might help stop her.
Tomorrow was Friday. Hopefully, he could get some of this going before the weekend. He emailed the best articles to them both, along with the directions for them to read over them and both meet him at his office tomorrow after school.
The next evening at the Thomas’ house, Angelica and Archie sat in the kitchen next to the family room where their mother was working on organizing some books on a shelf. Dinner was over, and Angelica had papers out on the kitchen table doing her homework while Archie sat at his laptop.
“I don’t think she realizes that she’s coming across like these other moms,” Angelica said. “Do you think I should show her these articles?”
“No!” Archie said loudly.
“Sh! Not so loudly. She’ll hear you,” Angelica said.
Mrs. Thomas, of course, stopped her work and began to listen to her kids.
“Look, here’s a test parents can take to see if they are annoying other parents. Should we take it for her?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, you read.”
“Do you brag?” Archie read from the parent survey on the article, ‘Do You Annoy Other Parents on Social Media.’
“Yeah. She’s gotta be.”
“You make mistakes often because you don’t understand social media?”
“Holy cow, yes!”
“Are you an over-tagger?”
“Hello!”
“Do you use Facebook when you should use Google to answer your search questions?”
“Oh YEAH she DOES! She JUST posted to her account the other day asking if anyone knew what day of the week Christmas would be this year.”
Archie laughed.
“What about—”
Mrs. Thomas walked in with her hands on her hips.
“Do you kids have something you’d like to address with me?”
“Oh, Mom! What are you doing here?” Angelica feigned surprise.
“Please. I wasn’t born yesterday. What’s all this about?”
“What do you mean?” Archie asked, his cheeks coloring two shades redder than his hair.
“I mean, you two are all but yelling about me and acting like you don’t want me to hear. What gives?”
“I can’t take it! We’ve got this new family policy and suddenly you’re all over my life!” Angelica burst out in tears again, just as she’d done in Dewey’s office when they first met, and ran out of the kitchen.
Archie flashed his mom a big smile. None of this was in the plan they had gone over earlier this afternoon in Dewey’s office.
She sighed.
“Oh, give me those,” she said, reaching for the articles about annoying Internet parents and sitting down to read them.
“Fine. Fine. Okay,” she mumbled as she read. Archie had gone back to his Minecraft game because although he felt worried about his sister being mad at him, with her out of the room he felt more concern about his base.
“Please. This isn’t a problem. I was just trying to join in on the fun.” She sighed again and put down the articles.
“Well, you can watch me if you want,” Archie said, only too happy to show anyone who would watch all that he did in Minecraft.
She looked up and watched Archie quietly for a few minutes.
As she watched she got an idea, and grabbed her phone to look up “Minecraft basics.”
“Arch,” she said. “What resource do you wish you had more of?”
“Obsidian,” he answered, not even wondering where she’d gotten that question from.
“Do you have a house?”
“I’m working on a sushi restaurant. Wanna see it?”
“Show me.”
Archie went to his restaurant. It was near the ocean with a pathway leading to a wooden dock, a chest full of fishing rods nearby, and another chest to store the fish that were caught. The pathway leading from the ocean back to it was built out of cobblestone, dirt, and grass. Out front, a small wooden fence surrounded a koi fish pond. The restaurant had a big glass opening to the front with two iron doors that opened automatically when you stepped on the pressure plates. The walls were built out of quartz and the floor was made from wood. For the lighting, Archie used glowstone blocks recessed into the ceiling and right in the middle of the room, red stone lamps, fence, and trapdoors made a big chandelier. There were tables and chairs, and a long sushi counter built from concrete. Different colored glass window panes lined the walls.
“Wow! Can you show me how to do this?” she asked opening up her laptop.
“What do you want do to?”
“How do I start?”
“You need to pick your skin.”
Archie showed
her how to install the game and create a username.
A quick study, she figured something like “Archie’s mom” wouldn’t be all that popular, so she went with something that spoke to her, instead. “MTdigs. You know, like Mrs. Thomas Digs and empty digs because I’ll be digging a lot of nothing for a while.”
“Not bad!” Archie said, raising one eyebrow. “You want to turn on ‘cheats?’”
“What’s that? No! I don’t want to cheat.”
“It just helps when you’re getting started,” he said.
“Definitely, not.”
Before he knew it, his mom had MTdigs up and running.
“Okay, well, you gotta make sure you survive the night so you need to chop down some trees, build a crafting table, and you need shelter.
“Mom,” Angelica said. “I’m going to Pamela’s now for a while. Okay?
Their mom, engrossed in all the tasks Archie just gave her, didn’t look up.
“Mom. You hear me? Mom?”
“What, honey? Sure. Go ahead.”
“Can I come back after dinner?
“Sure.”
“After eight?”
“Why not.”
Angelica shot Archie a triumphant look and headed out the door.
Turned out that Archie’s mom was pretty good at this, and found it a lot more interesting than social media. Archie wanted time to play games, but he didn’t at all mind his mom doing it, too. In fact, it was kind of fun for him.
Dewey had cleared the path, and what Archie’s mom uncovered was that when you’re in survival mode with your kids, sometimes you gotta get creative.
The Return
of the Ballbarian
“That’s a funny idea. Making something new look old,” Elinor said when the others introduced her to the newly remodeled retro-bowling alley.
“Well, if you call a hi-def video wall retro,” Dewey said.
The music pumped so loudly they could hardly hear themselves speak, and some movie Dewey didn’t recognize played behind the pins of each lane like flat screen TVs lined up in the Best Buy aisle.
Neon lighting split the bowling alley area in half like a pair of 3D glasses, the lanes and pins an underwater blue, the booth seats and wooden floor with the ball return machine magenta.
“Cool seat!” Colin said bouncing up and down and changing his shoes.
Seraphina’s mom was nearby in a booth table where she could keep an eye on them. Every single one of her senses felt taxed. The dark lighting, neon blues and pinks with flashy neon signs of the bowling alley’s name, and the fluorescent orange overhead lighting created a visual input virtually the same with her eyes open or closed. Up above the kids and to her immediate left was the arcade, a fully lit bright room, dinging, binging, clanging, and down below, the sound of pins crashing and people cheering. Cheap food—shrimp poppers, wings, pizza and fries all hit her nose at once like a car pile-up on the 405 freeway. The table where she sat, hoping to escape into her book or her phone, felt sticky from the morning’s syrup or jam, her seat hard and cold. She could think of no place on earth she’d hate more.
Down below, Dewey grabbed a ball, making sure the holes were the right size and the weight not too heavy. He did the moonwalk, sliding on the slick floor as the others laughed.
“Score sheet,” Seraphina said, taking the lead to set it up. “Let’s pick names for each other with the word ball in it.
“Dewey, I dub you ‘Meatball!’” she said, laughing and typing it in.
“‘Meatball?!’
“Pick a ‘ball’ name for someone else.”
“I gotta think.”
“Elinor, you’re ‘Eyeball,’” Colin said. They all laughed.
“Hairball,” nodded Elinor to Seraphina. More laughter.
Seraphina typed it all in.
“I got it! Colin’s ‘ballerina’.”
“That’s not a ‘ball.’ It’s not ball-e-rina.’”
Seraphina laughed, typing it in as they saw it projected on the wall.
“You’re up first, Meatball.”
He rolled two gutter balls.
“Eyeball’s up.”
Elinor selected her ball, an orange one, and held it close to her chest, staring down the lane. She took a couple steps, swung her arm, released the ball and it rolled, knocking down six pins.
“Nice!”
“Whoa,” Colin said. “Look at your hair!”
“What?” Elinor asked, trying to smooth it back into place as she balanced the heavy ball with one hand.
“The pink stripe in this light!”
“Oh! Hold, please,” Elinor said, getting back in position. She rolled her second ball, knocking down one more pin.
“It’s like, purple.”
“I’d say more lilac,” Seraphina said.
“Whatever it is, it’s glowing. Cool.”
Eyeball smiled.
The scoresheet read Hairball, and Seraphina took her turn, releasing the ball so gingerly it all but crept down the lane.
“Are you kidding?” Dewey laughed, confident the ball would stop before it even made it to the pins. The ball rolled along like an overweight pug on a walk.
Six pins went down.
Eyeball raised an eyebrow. “We’re almost tied.”
“How’d you do that with that absurd roll?” Dewey marveled.
Seraphina dried her hand on the little air vent and rolled another slow ball.
“No way! Spare!” Colin yelled. “Hairball!”
The screen lit up and did a light show celebration.
“Incredible,” Dewey said.
Colin selected his ball, held it up to his chin, and stood at the dots on the floor eying the middle pin. Then, just when they expected him to release and roll, he pointed his left index finger on top of his head and began to twirl his entire body around his fingertip.
“Goofball!” They laughed.
“No. Not ‘Goofball.’ That would have been a fine name, thank you. You picked Ball-e-rina.”
He lined his pointed foot up on the center dot again and then dipped into a plie, followed by a tippy toe, tippy toe, up to the line before finally rolling and knocking down some pins.
They’d all laughed so hard they missed how many pins he’d knocked down and had to check the screen.
“True. Very true!”
“It looks like you’re up again, Ma’am,” Dewey joked.
“Men can be ballerinas!” Seraphina objected.
“What about ball-e-rinas?” Elinor asked.
“Yes. YES! That, too?” Colin asked.
“Obviously,” Seraphina said. “And you’re still up.”
“Right!”
Colin rolled again, this time straight to the gutter.
“Tutu many distractions?” Dewey laughed and they all joined him.
“Meatball’s up again.”
Eventually their thumbs began to get sore, and someone said ‘Meatball’s’ name was making them hungry. So, Seraphina went to ask her mom if they could order some snacks. As they waited, Dewey sat on the big red vinyl lane side seating, taking in the smorgasbord of delights the room offered his senses. Was there anything better than the thunderous sound of the pins breaking? It made this satisfying clap, crack, like waves pulling off rocks at the beach.
He recognized the movie playing on the screens and it kept his attention, even though the sound wasn’t playing. Music blasted and he could feel the bass vibrate under his seat and in his chest. The colors and the lights made it feel like night and a party even though it was day out, and the smells of people’s food going by made his stomach gurgle with hunger. He wanted to eat it all.
“She say yes?” He asked when Seraphina came bouncing back.
“Yup. Whatever we want. Just asked us to add the cut-up veggie plate to whatever we order.”
They polished off a little of everything and felt sluggish but good.
&nbs
p; “’Nother round?” Colin asked, sucking some grease off his finger.
“Ha! You’ll be Greaseball,” Seraphina laughed.
“I’ll take it!”
“I’ll be Goofball,” she said.
“That works,” Dewey nodded. “I’ll be screwball.”
“Definitely works.” They laughed.
“Mothball.”
“Mothball?” Dewey and Colin both said together.
“I don’t know. It just came to me.”
“Okay! Mothball it is!”
They got one more round of bowling going. This time, Seraphina and her slow-witted ball got a strike the third frame in.
“How is that possible?! Your ball barely moves!”
“I don’t know,” she genuinely reassured Dewey.
“I did really great last time I went bowling with my family,” Dewey grumbled.
“You’re up, Mothball.”
Elinor lined her eyes up again with the arrow on the floor and her left foot with the dot before she swung and threw. She had power in her ball and knocked eight pins down.
She rolled again and got a spare.
“Okay. Well, that at least makes sense.”
Seraphina and Elinor laughed.
Dewey was up and threw a good roll, knocking down five pins followed by three more. Greaseball fouled, stepping over the line his first frame. His second one he psyched himself up picturing himself on ABC Wide World of Sports. It was the big game. He was up for the league trophy. He tried to put a spin on the ball for a last second curve. He got a spare, but he wrenched his upper arm, his finger, and his thumb.
“I’m out!” he said. “Someone else finish for me.”
Elinor sat on the red cushions drawing moths in her sketchbook. These were a different style from the manga she’d been working on earlier, more realistic. She liked the symmetry as she drew line segments on the wings, and feathered in texture and curves with a charcoal pencil. Each of the four petaled wings had a dark centered circle. They look like eyeballs, she thought, and smiled to herself about how their bowling names alighted on her page in more ways than one.
“We’re almost done. Only two more frames left,” Seraphina said.
“I can’t,” Colin said. “It’s seriously throbbing.”
“I can be done,” Elinor said.