Let the night begin!

Now read this entry and tell me it isn't sweet. That is what I'm looking for. A sap with genuine love. Wil comes across as a great husband. Then again, it IS his blog. I actually went looking for his book, Just a Geek, the other day. The only library that had it was at Queensboro Hill, which I had no idea actually existed. I requested it to be sent to my local library, but once I realized that requested books don't get sent out until someone attempts to check them out I decided to hunt it down myself. The trip to Queensboro took about an hour and a half from the Brookdale Campus. I wasn't precisely a happy camper when I walked in the doors, because it had become extremely cold and I'd underdressed. So, of course, the library didn't have the book. "Lost". I came home in a funk. and with a container of Haagen Daaz's Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream (sort of related, but maybe not: hells, it was Friday and I was pooped from midterms). Imagine my surprise when I came home to find my Amazon order of Jon Stewart and Co's America: The Book. Bolstered me a bit. It's weird to read that book on the subways, because the ads are postered all over the insides of the cars.

But back to Wil, sort of. I wholeheartedly feel his Incredibles love. That movie was TOTALLY AWESOME. I say that with no shame whatsoever. I literally found myself thinking, in the middle of the movie (which I saw this evening), "This thing is great!" My brothers and I all agreed that it's a movie we have to see again. I've not wanted to immediately rewatch any Pixar film before this one (although I'm fond of them all), and my brothers have never come to a consensus about rewatching ANYTHING we've viewed together before. So, yes. This is me saying go see The Incredibles ASAP. You'll love it.

Let's see if I can pull off the all-nighter I was contemplating this morning.

Saturday lessons

I work at school on Saturdays, for a camp called Project Happy. Project Happy is an activity-based camp attended by individuals (mainly children) with physical and mental handicaps from around the city. At PJ I work the bowling alley, which thrills me because I enjoy bowling. I also enjoy giving the kids I'm helping some pointers on how to bowl (if they're game, of course).

This morning the first person to come down to the alley was a little boy named Franz. Franz has mobility issues and is small for his age, but he's quite adept at lifting the lighter balls and sending them down the lane. He was my only bowler for a while, and he was doing fairly well (knocking a few pins down every turn or so). A couple of minutes later two girls came down to bowl as well, and Franz had to share a lane with them. After a while he started getting gutterballs more and more frequently. As far as I could tell it was because he was tired; his wrist was twisting as he was releasing the ball and it'd curve on it's journey down the lane. After a while I tried to instruct him on what he was doing wrong, and what he could do to improve, but he was too frustrated to be an astute pupil. He'd get to mumbling "I can't do it, I can't do it" after each turn and sit down with a dejected expression on his face. Mind you, while he was saying this he would occasionally "untwist" his wrist and get a ball to roll straight down the lane, illustrating that he could, in fact "do it", but he chose to ignore those rolls, most likely because he was only knocking down one or two pins. Our efforts to show him that one pin is significantly better than ZERO pins did nothing to assuage him. He was getting beaten by the girls (both of which were bigger than him), and that was that. He just couldn't do it. That became his mantra. He'd cry out "I can't do it" after every roll, no matter what the outcome, and go back to the benches and sulk. We'd tell him it was his go, he say he couldn't do it, we'd remind him that he could, he'd get up, roll, and we started it all over again.

What struck me was that he *could* do it. I'd seen Franz bowl for four weeks now; I could vouch for that. Hells, when he'd come down by himself he'd bowled excellently. Yet he'd insist he couldn't do it. So he wouldn't try. He'd drop the ball, ignoring all advice or prior knowledge, roll a gutter, and fulfill his own words. But he never just threw up his hands and let it all be. He'd keep trying, even though he swore to us up and down that he couldn't do it. It took a little persuasion on our part, but we'd get him back up and playing.

I read a lot into that. About people in general. Just don't ask me to post it all in clear form. It's 2:40 AM, dammit.
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I got him to promise me to come back down to the alley next week by telling him that I get all lonely down there by myself. I guess that means I really do have to work next Saturday.