Fun-heavy and stink-free

TK (that's Thompson & Knight) had a function for its employees last night at 5:30, essentially a "getting-to-know you" event catering mostly to their summer clerks and new associates and their families. It was described as a bowling party, and my mind immediately revisited the Bowl-Mor Lanes experiences of my youth. Unforgiving fluorescent lights, the reek of stale cigarette butts and sweaty shoes, and the almost-repressed memory of the time I was at a birthday party when I was eight and accidentally lofted my ball into an adjacent lane, where the "serious" bowler using said lane scolded me and described - in a none-too-nice manner - the Basics of Bowling Etiquette. TO AN EIGHT YEAR OLD. You know, the kind of place where the most exciting thing they have to offer is a two-fer-one special on mozzarella sticks and the much-touted Midnite Bowl, which basically amounts to them turning down the lights and playing Journey's Greatest Hits on endless loop.

Fortunately, Timothy told me about this little thing called "the internet", where we were able to look the place up so we'd have some idea what to expect. And here's what we found.

I know, pretty nice, right? I don't know what I was worried about. Anyway, the place had bowling and pool and and video games and giant TV screens playing sports and pop music videos and cool colored lights and glow-in-the-dark shoes and, and, and...The firm had pizza and veggies and chicken fingers for us to munch on, so Timothy and I reluctantly allowed Alex to have his first real taste of - dunh dunh dunh - FRIED CHICKEN.

Yeah, I hate to break it to y'all, but he was more interested in gnawing on a celery stick. I mean, sure he ate some, but he left a good half of it untouched. He spent most of the evening with a piece of celery hanging out of his mouth, which just goes to show that chicken nugget deprivation is not as cruel and unusual as it's thought to be.

After dinner, Alex kicked back and made himself comfortable. I tried to tell him that this was no Bowl-Mor Lanes, that things like putting your foot on the dinner table was frowned upon in such a ritzy establishment. But did he listen?

Timothy and I did actually do some bowling between all the eating and schmoozing and trading Alex back and forth. There were maybe thirty TK people divided into teams, so Tim and I were on a team with two other attorneys. I ended up beating him by something like seven points, with a score around 115ish? So I don't recall exact numbers, but I do think we both made a respectable showing for two maybe-once-a-year bowlers. Alex enjoyed the people and the lights and the balls and the celery, although if the little booger would ever decide to start walking, I think he would have even more fun being able to get around and explore at events like this. But he did manage to cruise his way around the benches, straight over to one of the opposing teams. Traitor.

Overall he was a little angel, very charming and entertaining and perfectly willing to be passed around, so he was pretty glazed-over when we finally headed home at 8:15. We're definitely looking forward to the next TK family function. I'm hoping it will be a firm-sponsored trip to Fiji. A girl can dream...