As indicated in my previous blog Aiden and Parker were given the ultimate punishment a parent can give these days for almost turning our house into the towering inferno, 30 days of no devices. Now, at first I though Shirley was nuts, by punishing the kids she was punishing us in a round about way. However, after they grew accustom to the idea of no devices, it was like we had two brand new kids. Granted, in the early days of their device free life they would still try to snatch our phones every once in a while, like recovering crack addicts teetering on the edge of relapse, but as time wore on they didn’t even try to swipe our phones. I remember one morning when I couldn’t find my phone and was certain one of the kids had taken it I stormed into the TV room (we still let them watch TV, we aren’t Communist China at the Jansma household) ready to start yelling at them only to find them contently watching TV. As day thirty was approaching our kids become as giddy as if Christmas was right around the corner. The frequency of them mentioning the return of their devices began to steadily increase and there was no way (even though we are the parents and we frequently have changed our minds about things in the past) we could not give them their devices back. Sadly, while we had hoped the thirty day respite from devices and the correlating change in behavior would stick, it didn’t, they are razor focused on one thing, like I am about sex, they are consumed by their devices, rarely does a thought not involving devices come into their heads. (unfortunately for Shirley, it’s gotten worse now that there are no sports, I use to think about sex 98% of the time now it’s 99.9%).

On Tuesday, the day they were reunited with their devices Parker had a birthday party in the afternoon so it was just Aiden and I when I got home. I asked him if he wanted to go to Craig’s Crusiers and he came up and hugged me while saying yes and proclaimed I was the best dad ever! Wow, the devices had already made my Aiden completely delusional, part of me hoped they would almost start the house on fire again so we would have an excuse to take them away and keep them from completely losing their minds. Regardless of Aidens over estimation of me as a parent, Craig’s Cruisers felt like a good idea at the time, but it’s one of those things, like going to a Chinese Buffet, that seems like a good idea when you think of it but after you enter and pay you realize you have made a huge mistake. I am assuming that Craig’s Cruisers, along with pretty much every business, has had to make concessions on their prices to get people to come back through their doors and it was only $20 per wristband for two hours of fun. The bumper boats were first and Aiden kept squirting me with the water cannon mounted on his boat. Go Karts were next and Aiden and I both had our own kart.

My kart sputtered out of the gate and I was concerned that every kart on the course would go blowing by me until I realized that all of them went roughly the same speed, not able to top 8 mph, and that this was about the driver’s skill level not how fast you could go. The first couple laps Aiden was no where to be found but I eventually lapped him and when I approached him he ran into me out of panic when I started yelling his name and driving towards him. Staying near him for the final laps was not an option due to the fact that he drives a go kart like a 90 year old women on the way to church. Besides, there was a 13 year old girl who thought she could pass me so it was Game On! I thwarted her every move the entire way, she had one last chance in the home stretch to get past me but I was like Dale Earnhardt at Daytona (not the one where he died, but one of the many he won) and fended her off and came into the garage victorious.

As we walked away from the track Aiden asked me if we could leave, we had been there for roughly 13 minutes, his exuberance for Craig’s Cruisers had taken a serious hit. I asked him why he wanted to leave and he indicated that he wasn’t any good at driving go karts. He explained to me that he couldn’t reach the brake very well to which I responded “whoa, whoa, whoa, you don’t use the brake when you are in a Kart, it’s throttle all the way, you have to regulate your speed with the throttle.” He still wasn’t that interested in sticking around but he was cool with hitting the links so we headed over to the mini golf course. I had heard that the East course has an Augusta feel to it and the West Course is more like Pebble Beach. We decided to hit the east course due to the fact that there was a back up on the first tee on the West Course.

My expectations were low for Aiden and he brought them down even further, I’ve seen people kick a golf ball with more accuracy than he had with an actual putter which was disappointing because I was having the round of my life (ended up shooting 3 under, possibly a course record, the girl in the clubhouse seemed clueless when I asked her if my score entitled me to have my name put on some type of plaque or something) and Aiden’s inability to golf hampered his ability to appreciate what a stick his old man is on the astroturf. Eventually I decided that I needed to incentivize him to keep him focused and told him that if he managed to muster a hole in one we could get shakes from Chick-fil-A. While the promise of an Oreo shake for an ace on the remaining holes had him trying harder, the results weren’t any better. When we finished 18 I told him we could leave after we hit the track one more time. I lapped him again and as we headed to the parking lot I was conflicted, we still had at least an hour left on our wrist bands, being Dutch, when you have unlimited use of something you use that something no matter how miserable of an experience it is. That being said, and even though I was leaving an hour of unlimited “fun” on the table, what was important was that Aiden and I had had fun together making the trip and the money spent almost worth it, besides I was really staring to crave an Oreo shake.