L o b a B l a n c a {dot} c o m

I sense a strike!

Here, my friends, is an integral piece to the puzzle that was my childhood: Strolling Bowling. This game probably also fed my growing desire for order and organization, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

This was the absolute perfect gift for an only child with simple entertainment needs and a bear-trap attention span. You wound up the little bowling ball, aimed it, and set it loose to bounce on its cute oversized orange feet toward the collapsible pins at the end of the alley. Yep, that really is all there is to it. Long was the “portable entertainment” road to Gameboy, my friends.

As for the encouragement of my future as an anal-retentive organization freak, this game might have started it. It folded up so very neatly. The pin section detached and fit inside the rest of the alley, which doubled as a carrying case. Oh, and the bowling ball also had a special little storage niche inside the case, and everything clicked together into a cute portable package that was perfect for those long trips we took every summer to my grandparents’ house and to Florida…because listening to repetitious plastic clackety noises coming from the backseat couldn’t have been at all irritating to my parents!

I actually still have my Strolling Bowling set; I even had it out last night when I ran across it in one of my storage bins (again, organized to a fault!). It’s one of the few childhood games that I kept. The rest of them really didn’t mean much to me. I think most only children have a certain disconnect when it comes to liking board games (also, I dare anyone to hold a special place in their heart for “Hungry, Hungry Hippos” when that was the taunt that still haunts their formerly fat inner child). I also think I was more of a book, drawing paper, and stuffed animal kind of kid.

Anyway, sorry for another game, but look at this little guy. How can you not love him? (And, yes, one day soon I will discuss my overwhelming anthropomorphic urges…)

The Strolling Bowling ball in action

(Images Courtesy of Firebox.com)

So say me-ow

Well, wasn’t I just the cattiest wolf ever in yesterday’s post? Slashing out at Gen-Y like the sad, still-sometimes-flannel-wearing Gen-Xer that I am. I would say that I’m simply out of touch because I’m now over 30 and I just “don’t get” the generation after my own. Truth is, though, that I don’t even get my own generation most of the time.

I really don’t get, however, the attitude that I have witnessed in some younger coworkers. Things like expecting kudos because they showed up at the time they were supposed to show up. This was a true moment from my last workplace (stupid me, thinking that such a thing was kinda sorta mandatory).

Uh-oh, I’m feeling another catty surge. Maintain, Loba. Maintain!

I guess I just don’t expect that much out of my work. I expect a regular paycheck. I expect to work with like-minded professionals (most of the time). I expect that I will enjoy some of what I do, but that’s not the point (see expectation number one). I don’t expect to get constant kudos for doing what I’m paid to do. When I started where I am now, I had to fill out a form stating when I would arrive and when I would leave. I just assumed that this would be a daily expectation, not something that required daily affirmation.

True, I severely stretch the limits of “business casual” with my Docs and more-casual-than-business attire some days (I tend to use as my excuse the fact that it’s just not the designer/IT style to be dressy, which works most of the time). I also indulge in the Gen-X/Y need for ADD-style computer use, with multiple programs and multiple tabs running in Firefox, all vying for a piece of my attention (like right now: I’ve got five programs running and seven tabs open to different Web sites, including one of the ones I manage).

However, I also know that when it comes time to buckle down and get the job done, I do just that. I come in early. I stay late. I take work home with me if I need to do so. I pull weekend duty or late-night duty. No, it’s not fun. It is what it is. Yes, my boss thanks me profusely and I very much appreciate that. But I don’t expect it, because 9 times out of 10, she’s right there in the trenches with me, doing the same thing.

I need to be more lenient, I suppose. The work place is a constantly evolving place. I know for a fact that I would not have made it in the work environment my grandparents worked in. Then again, look at all that has changed since then. Would their environment have existed if they’d had IMDb, blogs, and online news one mouse-click away? Probably not. But would they have lowered their expectations of coworkers and employees because of these things? Should they have? Should we?