but I don't have 9 balls

The boy walked with his Tae Kwon Do class in the Aloha Week Parade again this year (scavenger hunt: find us in the crowd scene. I'm the glowing white dot by - where else? - the food booth). They marched the main street and stopped every few yards to do their routine of kicks and punches in unison.

Followed by synchronized belt-twiddling.

We sat in the grass to wave at the fancy vehicles, and be-decked flatbeds full of overheated children pelted candy at us. We stuffed ourselves with lau lau and Korean chicken, bought a useless balloon animal, and had a lazy sun-tired evening of bbq, wine, and a movie with the friend-types. On Sunday, we borrowed their eldest girl-child, and had one of those charmed days of music and baking and yard-kids that make the weekends worth getting onto the library roof and pulling saplings out of the gutter for.

I say that, but I actually love climbing up to the roof. Going through the dark, humming machinery to scrabble up the metal ladder and pop the ceiling hatch makes me feel like I'm in a sci-fi horror flick, and I always pretend I am wearing gritty-yet-alluring space pants and leap off the last few rungs into a defensive posture. Will eventually break a heel and kill myself in there.

more:

than:



(While I am at work, anyway. Sigourney there pretty much sums up my home-defense system.) /end tangent

When it comes to festivities, I am not so much a participates-in-fun-activities person as a hides-in-kitchen-with-a-ham-and-a-bottle-of-moscato person. But of all the assorted tortures that go along with Aloha Week, this one managed to pique my interest:

Friday, October 22
Cross Country Golf: 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Tee Time 12:00 and 3:00 p.m. Shot gun start.
Bring three clubs (one needs to be homemade) and nine junk golf balls for this fun-filled event.

Did you catch that? Bring three clubs - ONE NEEDS TO BE HOMEMADE (oh yeah, and "shot gun start". Hello, officer). This promises to be, essentially, a bunch of semi-sober people hitting balls with baseball bats and, I don't know, stuffed swordfish - across some undefined course to some unknown goal, for no other reason than to run amock swinging unconventional implements of ball whackery. That is some action I could get behind. I could even knit some golf cozies by Friday, and appropriate the boy's light saber. The "voom voom" noises and flashing light could distract the competition. And if they get ahead of me, I can hit them with it. Foolproof.



There were no events for fish slapping or self defense against fresh fruit. I might apply to be on the committee next year.