Author: Yinglan

Hello and welcome. Come on in from the cold. It’s chilly in my neck of the woods today, the high will only go up to 46-degree-Fahrenheit (around 8-degree-celsius). Would you like something hot to drink? I’m afraid the options are rather limited. I’m trying to limit my caffeine intake on weekends so I’m going with a nice extra-hot cup of chamomile tea.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you I was thoroughly de-stressed and had fun yesterday. You see, every few months, my department would host a fun event – in May, we went golfing, we watched a baseball game in September, we were supposed to have the event in December but Thanksgiving and Christmas forced the event to get pushed up.

First, we bowled. It was my first-time ever to bowl, which surprised my coworkers. Don’t get me wrong, I have been to a bowling alley before, long ago, but I wasn’t allowed to bowl at the time. It was a social event for my mom and her former high school classmates and I was just there, being seen but not heard.

It was the first time and wouldn’t be the last time I watched mom have fun with her friends while I somehow faded in with the background. Well, I guess I finally got to have some real fun. I sucked at bowling though, probably half of my turns ended up gutter balls.

After bowling came axe throwing and I must admit, I wasn’t great at that either. I kept missing the target, hitting the wooden bar below instead but after several tries, my aim improved. Axe throwing was my favorite part as I got to relieve a lot of pent up stress and anger which had been bottled up for who knows how many years. I found the more I focused on my anger, the better my aim was.

After axe throwing, my co-workers and I entered the world of arcade gaming. Again, my co-workers were surprised I have never played at the arcade before. “Actually, I have been to the arcade,” I told them. I just wasn’t allowed to play. Same as bowling and other fun activities, I was always that person in the background, observing, watching other people have fun.

I remember my uncle and cousin used to go to the arcade all the time. They would play these shooting games and I would be watching them, mesmerized in the game and imagine myself playing the game.

I finally got to give it a try yesterday. It was definitely harder than it looked. I couldn’t even get through the first round.

Oh, and did I mention I sucked at skeeball, too?

Maybe I just at arcade games or any type of games in general because I never got to experience those things when I was a child and now that I’m an adult, I feel like I missed out on a lot of childhood things. I know mom would be rolling her eyes because she seemed to be under the impression I had the perfect childhood, that all the emotional trauma her family has cast upon me were figments of my imagination and that I should be grateful that her sister was willing to take me in.

She wasn’t there, how would she know?

The last activity of the day was bumper cars. This brought back wonderful memories of my stepdad and I maneuvering a bumper car at Knott’s Berry Farm long ago. Instead of maneuvering a crowd yesterday, I was maneuvering the bumper car between Mr. CFO and two of my co-workers. It was incredibly fun as we crashed into each other on purpose. I can’t remember when I last laughed so much.

Perhaps, I need to do this more often.

Thank you for joining me for this weekend’s #weekendcoffeeshare. I hope we’ll both return next week.