Not being a boarder, the next time I went skiing I spent my time looking down at snowboarders from the ski lift, to see what was involved in a toe turn. Here's the deal: You have to lean forward into your toes such that you turn your board but do not lean too far and thus initiate a fall of the face-plant variety. I can understand how this might get a little tricky. I told Chris that. His instructor told him that, too. "It took me four years to learn how to turn," she said. "See, Chris?" I said. "I still hate toe turns," he said, but this time, the weather cooperating as well, he survived the lesson a little bit more cheerfully.
This is not to say he is done complaining. But I got to thinking that if I imposed my idea of fun on him, sort of, by signing him up for lessons without revealing that he absolutely positively had to stick them out, then he was beginning to influence me from his own direction. This has been made possible by a device known as a Wii. I am the worst when it comes to judging video games as sordid, loser entertainment designed to make kids into drooling ADHD idiots who never care if they see Mother Nature again. Yet both my husband and son are avid players of said games, and are not (yet) drooling idiots. So when I heard about the interactive qualities of a Wii, I thought I just might be able to stomach this. My husband's birthday was coming up, and I managed to wrassle up a Wii right here in town. (The intricacies of scoring a Wii in a small Four Corners burg are extraordinary, but that's another story.)

The upshot of Wii fun is this: You use your remote to actually mime the actions required to, say, score a strike with a bowling ball, or to K.O. someone in boxing, or to get a birdie in golf. As a result, you can actually get exercise. I managed to get a sore arm from bowling, and when Chris boxes he breaks into quite a sweat. The point for me, though, is that I never, ever, ever, in a million years would have purchased a Wii, much less known what they were, without Chris and Jonathan in my life.

Yet I ran up against my own version of Chris' toe turns with Wii bowling. I have gotten better, but am still terribly inconsistent, apparently, in my "release" of the ball. I cannot for the life of me figure out what I am doing differently when, on one try, I get a strike, and on the next, the Wii seizes up, my ball hangs in the air, and it tells me to reset and try again. The first time I played, I sank right down to where Chris probably does every time his toe turns fail him: I don't get this! I suck! I hate this game! And left, once, I swear, in near tears.

Jonathan and I try to tell Chris that his turns will come; that he has to be willing to stick some things out; that it takes time and patience. And yet here's his mom, furious at a video remote control for being so opaque when it comes to virtual bowling. The sins of the mothers rain down upon their sons, as the saying goes. So the deal is this for now: He finishes his lessons for this year, and I keep plugging away at bowling. Maybe someday we'll master both, and both be grateful that one exposed the other to such exquisite challenges.