August 13, 2004 - Friday
Twice this week Harry and I played shuffleboard and for the second time yesterday he surprised me with his ability to, more or less, put the discs near the target. There where several times when his disc didn't make it past the "dead" line, in which case I'd have him try again. But more often than not his distance was surprisingly good. In the picture to the left he's playing yellow and I'm black. I don't recall specifically, but it looks like the disc he's playing here will go to the left and slightly miss the triangle. There's another on the court but off to the right of the 7 and another in the right gutter. There's also one good 8 and that's all a pretty good example of Harry's ability. The impressive thing for a four-year-old is that most of his discs where close. Whether or not he'd score, his discs where close enough to the triangle to be in play.

Most of the time Monday and yesterday Harry used a miniature cuestick, but about half way through our game yesterday he asked me to switch so he could try my adult cue. Somewhat surprisingly, he did even better with the longer one, even though it looked completely inappropriate for him. I think, though, that it give him a more stable angle from which to push the disc.

(There is an interesting side story to this game yesterday that has to do with Harry's napping. He doesn't usually nap these days and when he does he often wakes up in a terrible mood that really begs the question as to whether a nap is really beneficial. He and I played today because it just seemed unfair to Jeremy, Ben, and Sam that Harry be with them in such a bad mood. And, while he initially seemed to like the idea of playing shuffleboard again with me, the walk to the court took a serious turn for the worse and I took Harry to sit by the tennis courts for about 10 minutes until he and I could get his mental state back together. Of course, once there, the shuffleboard was very good.)


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