Cupcakes and Pool

Sept. 25, 2009

Wednesday was a pretty good day in our household.

First of all, Wednesday was the day that my oldest decided to ask a good friend to the Sadie Hawkins dance. When I was in high school, girls just had their friends go up to the friends of the boy in question and say something clever to the effect of, "If my friend asks your friend to Sadie's, do you think he'd say yes?" If there was encouragement, a note would be passed during the middle of math class where the boy would read, "Do you want to go to Sadie's?" and he'd check a box labeled Yes or No. Simple.

These days, high school kids often go all out to think of really clever ways to ask each other to dances. If a boy simply asks a girl to the dance (or vice-versa), it's seen as something of a let down, as if that's not really throwing yourself out there, exposed and vulnerable. Bree's invitation wasn't over-the-top, but it was still pretty cute. She baked a big batch of cupcakes (she's known for baking for her big group of friends 'just because,' so it's not out of the ordinary for her to show up with brownies or cookies or cupcakes), and handed them out to her pals at break between the first two classes of the day. On one of the cupcakes, she had written the word "Sadie's?". She handed the special cupcake to the boy, and he smiled, gave her a hug, and said, "Of course!" Aw, how sweet! He's a sweet kid, and they've been friends for a long time, so I'm sure they'll have a great time.

Later in the evening, Doug decided to go out to a local pool tournament that he had heard about. He is a crazy-good pool player, and has really been on his game lately. There were some solid players in the race, but none that he couldn't beat on any given day. Well, Wednesday was his given day, because he was the last man standing, and he walked away with the prize money. It wasn't as much prize money as he was hoping it might be, but it was more than he went in with. Even cooler though, was that they were holding a raffle drawing for a pool table for all the entrants in the tournament. It turned out that the winner of the tournament got an additional 20 tickets entered in the drawing, so his odds of winning were dramatically increased. As you might guess, based on the way the rest of this post is going, he won the pool table! I had just walked into the pool room to pick him up just as he made the winning shot for the tournament, and then right after that they did the drawing, so I got to be there for that, too. We have no place in our home right now for an 8 foot pool table, so we are trying to figure out if we're just going to store it or try and sell it, but just the fact that he won is astonishing. We never win anything! (I guess we can't say that anymore.)