Brian and Family Attempt Ladder Golf

So for Father's Day, the kids all got jobs so they could make some money to be able to buy me a gift. My daughter got a job as a mattress tester, which meant for about two hours a night she tested her mattress, and for the next 8 hours, she tested mine, and drooled all over my pillow, and shoved her doll's pointy feet into my vertebrae. My son got a job as a Carpet Tester, which meant that he ran around the house spilling things on the carpet to see how well it would absorb those things. The dogs even got internships as urine distributors, but we'll talk about that later...

Anyhow, they got me this nice gift called Ladder Golf, which goes by a whole host of other names which generally denegrates the Polish. It's this game with two golf balls attached together by a thin rope, and the object of the game is to fling the golf balls/string thing and get it to wind around one of the ladders. (Side note: If you're a severe idiot about putting things together like me, and I mean like one step above being-in-a-coma type of idiot, putting together the ladders can be so frustrating that you just want to throw the whole thing in the fire while running around screaming and raping strangers.) But eventually I got it OK. I'm grown.

So we get everything set up, and are ready to play. Me and my son, versus my wife and my daughter. Let me interject for a second here and say that as the game began I was still a little on edge and tense and also feeling very competitive since I had actually won the fight with the stupid ladder thing and not started screaming or raping anybody nearby in the process.

The kids are all excited. I'm excited too, yelling things like, "We're gonna whup your asses!!" and "Boys rule, girls drool," and other such taunts which were sure to inspire my 5 and 3 year olds to play their best and have fun all the while respecting the idea of good sportsmanship.

My daughter steps up to throw. She has never played this game before. This is the first ladder golf throw in her entire life. She throws.... and being 5 she greatly overestimates the "oomph" you need to put on golf balls and rope to get them to go 15 feet in the air. Greatly overstimates this. The ball/rope thing flies over the ladder. The ball/rope thing flies over the backyard fence. The ball/rope thing lands on the neighbor's roof. The ball/rope thing rolls down the neighbor's roof and sticks in the neighbor's gutter. I stare at the gutter. My daughter and wife stare at the gutter. My son stares at the gutter. There is silence. Finally my son says,

Son: The balls are stuck.

Everyone looks worried about this. I try to ease the tension.

Me: What the crap kind of a throw was that???

The game of ladder golf has taken on a completely different meaning. My wife gets the real ladder and begins to walk over to the neighbor's house to retrieve the balls. I sit in the grass and pout, and swear softly, and rip grass from in between my legs.

Finally after 20 minutes, we get the balls down (notice how I say we, like I had much to do with it.) My daughter is extremely gentle after that. Her next few throws go like this.

Really short
Really far left
Really really far left
10 minute stoppage in play because balls are all tangled up. I get mad because I have no patience for knots either, so instead of carefully untangling rope, I yank fiercely at the balls in all angles, and stomp around when they won't come undone out of fear.
Really short again
Backwards

My son, on the other hand, doesn't even pay any attention to the ladder, instead choosing to fling the balls as hard as he possibly can. His first few throws go like this.

40 feet left, rolls under the big pine tree
50 feet right, rolls right up by the back door
10 feet right and way too far, smashes high chair we have left outside for no good reason
Way too high and far, smashes into outside of porch
Way far left, smashes dog in lungs. Dog makes a "Buhhhhh" noise, then goes and hides under the trampoline and whines

So, sufficed to say, our first attempt at ladder golf did not go according to plans. We're probably playing again tonight. Watch out for your lungs, Burnsville.