and you ask yourself, how did i get here? karen, the kids & i spent the day at our church picnic. it was really cool this year. they had chinese & silent auctions. i had the winning bid on a romantic overnight stay at a local hotel along w/a bottle of champagne & 4 pretty cool lookin' flutes(not the musical kind). it was a little bit of money, but it was for a good cause so it was ok.
they had games for the kids & karaoke. they also had volleyball & bocce. if you don't know what bocce is, then you obviously haven't met any italian-americans. bocce is a game where there are usually teams of 4. the teams are divided into red & green w/each team member having a color matched hard ball slightly larger than a softball. each teams rolls, throws, tosses, etc their bocce ball forward, attempting to have it come to a rest as close as possible near a smaller baller slightly larger than a golf ball. still with me? good. after each team member goes, the team w/the ball(s) closest to the small ball win that number of points. for example, w/8 bocce balls in play, the red team has the two closest bocce balls, so they get 2 pts & the green team gets zilch.
ok, all that lead in for my point. while jackson was napping & karen & maya were helping w/some games, i went over to play bocce. i got in on a game in progress. my team was winning. the first throw...i knock my teams ball out of contention & give the other team a point!! yeah me. we ended up winning anyway w/my final shot putting us over the 15pts needed to win. everyone took a break & the person running the game, a young greek woman(she has a black t-shirt w/the words bocce in white ironed on letters), told me to just hang around & there would be another game. as i'm walking off, this guy comes up & says he would play. apparently, you can also play single bocce ball. in this case, you just get to toss all 4 balls. so the game starts. this guy says he doesn't really play(i play a few times a year w/the in-laws). he's a ringer. he starts kicking my ass. at one point, it's like 5 to 1. did i mention the other guy is a parapalegic in a wheel chair? he doesn't really have any legs to speak of? yeah. didn't think so. next, another older greek gentleman(who looks remarkably like ernest hemingway complete w/hat & deck shoes) comes up & joins in on my side while the young greek girl(i think it may have been his daughter) joins the guy in the chair. the game continues & a young boy, about 8 comes over & wants to play. the girl lets him take over for her. the kid's first roll is dead on. so is the next, and the next and the 8 other after that. so, there i am, w/a bright red burned head playing bocce ball at a catholic church(i'm not catholic) w/an old greek man(who repeated says he's played the game for 50 yrs & can't shoot as well as the kid), a guy w/cerebral palsy & a hump in a wheelchair & an 8yr old kid...and i'm getting my ass kicked. we ended up scoring 8 unanswered points to win...thank goodness. if i had lost, i may have hung up my bocce shoes forever. don't worry. there are no such thing as bocce shoes.
