Zombie Dad

Last year, M gave me a Zombie Bowling gift for Christmas. The whole set is made of wood. The pins are cone shaped with spheres on the pointy tip as the heads. They are about 3.5" tall. Nine of the pins are painted like decomposing zombies and one is painted like a terrified woman. The bowling ball is painted like a bomb. The goal is to setup the pins and then bowl down the zombies to save the woman.

M's intention was for me to take it to work, however that never happened and T got a hold of it one day. We have been periodically playing with the set ever since, but mostly in a non-traditional bowling format. In fact very little bowling has taken place. Over the past week, the game started as the zombies trying to attack T and then T blasts them with the bomb. When the zombies attack one at a time, he doesn't have any problem destroying them, but sometimes they attack two at a time and one gets through to nibble on his neck. T is quite ticklish on his neck, so we have a great laugh over it. Over the week, the game evolved into T using the container, which is a cylinder, as an arm cannon that can shoot out a variety of things - water, fire, bombs, etc. and the zombies would look for brains and get blasted by the cannon. Sometimes the zombies burn briefly until the get put out by the water cannon. Sometimes they explode and go flying through the air (this is T's favorite). The zombies now have names and hold conversations with each other.

I went to pick up T from school the other day. At the end of the day, his class usually ends up in the gym for free play time, and I usually end up playing with him and the other kids on the days I pick him up. This day was no different and when I entered the gym, the kids were all playing with giant green balance balls. The balls are almost as tall as the kids. So T asks, "can you be a zombie, Dad?" I agree and the next 25 minutes are spent with T trying to bowl me over with the balance ball while I make zombie sounds trying to get him. When I get hit, I explode and fall down or get blasted into a wall. It doesn't take long for all of the other kids to join in and I am completely overwhelmed by the balance balls and then kids piling on top of me.

School closes by six o'clock, so we have to leave. We had such a great time, T asked if we could continue playing at home. On the way out, we pass by the front desk. T says, "Dad, I want to write something." So we find a piece of paper and a pen and I let him write down what he wants. It is just scribbles, so I ask him what it says and he replies, "Daddy, thank you for being a zombie."