I’m going to take this opportunity to write about how awesome my kids are.
I realize that most parents say this about their kids and many of them are right. All of them should be blogging about it. Kids who are awesome and do awesome things deserve to be praised from the highest mountains. So here’s my story about a weekend that my kids turned from ordinary to extraordinary in a span of less than twenty-four hours.
For those who don’t know, I have two children with my wife of sixteen years: a 13-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy. Through some weird nickname wormhole, these two fine little humans are affectionately referred to as “Pants” and “Dude”, which are actually short for “Princess Pants” and “Doodle”, which were actually short for “Princess Paloney Baloney” and “Mister Doodle” (he was 10 lb 9 oz when he was born and when you’re that big they call you Mister).
Anyhow, they’re great kids, but unlike a lot of other kids I know neither of them are crazy interested in competitively doing things. Pants stopped figure skating right before it got really serious (phew!) and Dude had shown only mild interest in such things – until bowling, that is (the funny thing is that we were calling him Dude before he started bowling).
Now we’re calling him The Dude.
This is his third year of 5-pin bowling. For the uninitiated, 5-pin bowling is done with a smaller ball (with no holes in it) and there are, appropriately, five pins which are arranged in a wide “V” shape. Unlike 10-bin bowling where each pin is worth one, in 5-pin the head pin is worth 5, the two beside it are each worth 3, and the two end pins are each worth 2. You get to bowl three balls per frame (instead of two), with the same strike and spare rules as in 10-pin (i.e. your strike counts all pins plus the next two balls with your spare counting all pins plus your next ball). A perfect game is 450.
Dude’s best score is 221 but his average is sitting around 127, which is pretty good for a 9-year-old playing with kids a year older than he is (Bantam age bracket is 7-10). This past weekend Dude went to his regular bowling league game on Saturday while Pants and I were hanging with a friend of mine (more on that later). Turns out he qualified to compete in the Zone Championships the next day at some lanes one city over (20 minutes or so by car). So, Sunday morning my wife packed him up and got him registered. Before he left he said to me, “I feel like I’m going to have a good day.”
Understatement of the year, kid.
With nine frames done in his first game he was below average by enough that it wasn’t looking too good. Then, in the tenth frame he bowled three strikes in a row for his first ever turkey (that’s what you call three strikes in a row in bowling) for a 160. His second game was a 171, followed by a 147 and a consistent 148. After four games he was 92 pins up on the next boy but fatigue started to set in and he rounded out his first five-game set with the only one below his average, carding a 124. His average over the five games was 150.
Even with the sub-par last game, his lead held up and he was crowed the Bantam Boys (Singles) Zone Champion earning him a spot at the Provincial Championships on March 6. We couldn’t be more thrilled. He keeps asking when he can watch the movie The Big Lebowski. If he wins provincials I just might let him.
“The medal doesn’t say first place, but I won, and it’s gold, so that’s okay.” – The Dude
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| The Dude Abides |
Remember how I mentioned Pants and I were hanging with a friend of mine on Saturday while Dude was bowling? Well, this friend is a super rad guy named Jim. Aside from being an all ’round good guy, Jim is also musically inclined. He plays guitar, bass, a little keyboard, and taught himself to play the harmonica the other day – just because. Jim and I played in a little coffee shop trio called Argyle Speedo with our friend Steph a while back. It was fun. I like writing lyrics to stuff Jim creates, though they tend to be on the depressing side, whereas Jim’s wheelhouse tends toward happy fun stuff.
Anyway, Jim was taking an art sabbatical and spending all his non-sleeping time at Kwartzlab and wanted me to hang with him and create stuff one day. I asked if Pants could join us because she recently picked up her guitar for the first time in well over a year (with only 8 months of lessons under her belt) and I thought it would be cool for her to experience the creation of art for no other reason than to create art. Jim being Jim thought this was a top shelf idea and on Saturday around 10:30 in the morning Pants and I met him at the lab. He was upstairs shooting footage for a vlog and had an array of recording equipment and instruments lying around.
We just fiddled with instruments for a bit, with Jim and Avery randomly strumming stuff and me trying to figure out the cajon drum box. After a couple hours of playing some John Lennon, Vance Joy, Axis of Awesome and other random stuff we grabbed a sandwich.
After lunch, we got out the trusty “How to Write a Hit Song” cheat sheets and Avery picked a major key and a chord progression and just started strumming, Jim got the harmonica out and started playing his brand new mouth organ, and I started banging on the cajon. A couple minutes later it sounded like a song.
I was mentioning that I only wrote sad lyrics and this song needed words. Avery, rather shyly, mumbled something. I went to write it down and she was hesitant to repeat it. After some coaxing I got her to give me the line.
“I’d walk backwards to the moon if it meant I could see you smile”
I encouraged her to get more out and Jim reminded us that it didn’t have to rhyme. We played off the action “walk”. What else can you do? Run, jump, leap…
“I’d somersault into outer space if you’d talk to me for a while”
There was discussion on how to properly spell “somersault”, which distracted Jim from the rhyming. And so it went until we had two short verses of four lines each.
I’d walk backward to the moon
If it meant I could see you smile
I’d somersault into outer space
If you’d talk to me for a while
I’d hang upside down from the clouds
To see your sparkling eyes
I’d hold onto you for some amount of time
If we didn’t have to say goodbye
Against the music it was starting to sound even more like a song. It was a song! It was a song that needed a chorus, so back to the cheat sheet we went. Once we had chords we liked for it Jim played around with it a bit and we got working on the lyrics for the chorus.
We tried a few things and scratched out most of them, and with Jim singing them out loud while tinkering with strum patterns we landed on the following:
Backwards somersaults upside down
Holding onto you
Wishing time would come around
So I can stay with you
Ink will fade
But memories last
Memories last
Ink will fade
But memories last
Forever
We gave it a run through and decided to play around with the order of things, stitching it together thusly:
Verse 1
Chorus
Verse 2
Harmonica Solo
Chorus
Last Half of Chorus
With Avery and I singing, me on the cajone, and Jim on his guitar we gave it a spin and it sounded pretty good. Did I mention that there were other people in the lab working on various things? This made me feel a bit self-conscious and I thought it would make Pants clam up for sure, but it wasn’t a problem. She was so focused on this song that the room may as well have been empty.
Jim then did a track just with guitar and then the harmonica solo and then Pants was up for the first vocal track. Jim said it would be weird listening with the headphones and singing into a mic but Pants, who hasn’t had a single voice lesson, wasn’t properly warmed up, and had only sung the lyrics a few times stepped up and gave it a whirl. A little off key and a little screw up on the second verse, she plowed through and got the job done!
Then, it was my turn. Jim was right about singing with headphones on into a mic. I found it really weird and after one verse immediately needed a do over. Second time through, a little off key and with the same screw up (not on purpose) on the second verse we were done.
Pants gave the second verse another shot and improved it a little, then Jim put the bass line on it (or maybe he did that earlier, I can’t remember) and crammed it all into his magic music making app and there was a real life MP3 to show for the day’s efforts. Time had run out and Pants and I had to get going, so there wasn’t the opportunity to do any of the vocal tracks over again. This concerned Pants at first but Jim and I explained that most songs she listens to have had hours and hours of recording and editing. She spent probably 8 minutes, as a first timer no less, laying this track down.
Jim has a great saying: Perfect is the enemy of done.
We got into the car and Pants looked over at me with a big smile on her face.
“That was the most fun I’ve ever had. I can’t believe I just wrote and recorded a song!”
Jim did a bit of editing on the song and asked if I’d ask Pants if she was okay with the song being put out into the world. She said yes, and I could not have been more proud. I made sure she knew it, too. It takes some serious intestinal fortitude to put anything that you know isn’t perfect out into the world, let alone to do that and have all the additional pressures of being a teenage girl and wanting to fit in and be cool. Plus, the internet can be a cruel place.
After she agreed, she looked at me with a smidgen of doubt. I told her that no, it wasn’t perfect and we all made mistakes, but it was a first cut of something wonderful and if anyone wants to give her grief over it that she can tell them to stuff it.
Expect a version done by Woot Suit Riot soon, as well as improved vocal tracks from Avery and I at some point, but for now here it is…
Ink Will Fade by Princess Pants, Andrew and Jim:
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