This is a little taste of what we do at our house. We're all for increasing our gross motor skills and eye-hand coordination, plus learning to count reallyreally fast. We just have to be careful of the eye-glazing that occurs, not to mention the drooling.

And that's only the people watching! I dare any of you who might see someone hitting a paddleball to not stop to watch. It's not possible. You HAVE to stop everything, tell your kids or significant other to "be quiet, too bad, I want to see how long this guy can do this." Or girl.

It's Daughter #1's fault. She bought this little beauty and brought it home, so of course we ALL had to try. So far she's at 134, with her right hand, 27 with her left. I wonder what her right arm will look like in 2 months?

The rest of us aren't doing so well. I think I got to 7. Not sure, I kept losing count.

Oh, that's another thing-- how to keep count? It's too damned fast! D#1 counts on her fingers with her other hand, but I couldn't do it. Found out I've been doing it wrong for 45 years.

I count up to 5, then 5 again, that makes 10, then I start counting up to 5 again, but have to remember I've already done it twice, so that's 10 plus whatever finger I'm on at the moment... Forget it! This sucks! I can't do this! This is just stupid!

Well, D#1 does it this way-- count up to 5, then count DOWN again to 10. Up and down. Fingers out, fingers in. (We better teach this to our youngest family member-- he's 4 and will be starting school this year.) Plus she has a better memory than me, but that doesn't mean anything.

Yes. I'm slow. Example: We call cars with one working headlight "pediddles." It took me until my late 20's to figure out why we never see pediddles in the daytime.

So now you know what we do on Saturday nights. Hey, whyncha come on over, join the fun? If you can stand the cultural enrichment. Mind-numbing, yes, but still a unique learning experience.