Well helllloo there. and welcome back. After 4 days of meaningful blogs. I AM BACK Y’ALL. I had to do the “Love the Gulf Coast” blog carnival for several reasons, one of which being I actually live on the Gulf Coast and I love it. Then for Memorial Day I had to remember those who gave all, and those who were willing to. So now I am totally ready to let me hair down and dance nekkie with wood nymphs in my back yard. However due to past legal issues regarding woodland nymphs rights and permanent eye damage class action claims, I am going to do that after dark and without photos. Instead today I write to you about something we have all encountered.
Let me get it all ready for you so you can share in my delight…
The setting- a tiny local splash park designed for toddlers and up, completely safe, especially if you follow the rules.
The cast- a boat load of dads that clearly were going it alone, either as single dads or as “weekend visitation dads” none the less there were a pluthera of dads there and NO women, except me and my 21 year old daughter Sam ( home from college for 2 days), and I was with my spouse which did not limit my flirting with the above mentioned dads, because hey, just cause I am married I aint dead right? {fist bump} *snort* and all that other stuff men do and say when they check out women, cause I am all about equal rights as long as they benefit me. Oh yeah there were kids there. They were varied in ages but it looked as if the Prince was one of the oldest, ok so he was the tallest, but he is the tallest everywhere we go.
There were cutie little girls, and athletic little boys, but the star of this show was not the prince, it was another little boy, we shall call him El Screamo… This child was about 8 years old surrounded by kids obviously younger than himself, with the exception of the Prince who is 9.
Please silence your cell phones as the main feature is about to start.. ( notice there are no commercials, yeah I am cool like that, your welcome.)
Act 1
El Screamos dad I think his name was Poor dude, starts up a conversation with us in regards to the park and hating to pay the water bill here. Me , Sam ( home from college) and the Droid ( there against his will) all politely make small talk and fight the urge to growl and throw things at the poor dude trying to talk to us, like the miserable pack of loners we are. The kids are playing and we are sitting under a pavilion with only 2 benches and he is behind me, peering at my back, I can feel it. Yet I attempt to be civil.
Act 2
The prince disobeys the rules, wipes out, skins his knee and elbow. He’s not the toughest kid in town by far, but he knew the rules disobeyed them and received no pity. He hobbled to the table, ate watermelon and sucked it up. NO pity.
Act 3-
El Screamo takes the stage by going down the 1/2 foot toddler slide and having water and or air hit him in the face, thus causing a parental alert and anyone with a uterus in a 2 mile range to come running. I am not sure at this point if El Screamos dad had trained him to react like that so he could meet chicks or what, but it was effective. For the remainder of Act 3 please turn you tv or radio to the emergency broadcasting system during test time at full surround sound home theater volume for about 3 minutes. Rinse and repeat for about 7 minutes.
Act 4 -We have been there approximatively 25 minutes and we are all reaching our threshold of patience and faking family time. We are ready to go, but we know the prince is having a good time so we push a little harder like on the stair master at the gym, you feel like you’re going to die so you do another cycle just to see if you will die? Luckily the ice cream Lady drives up in her silver chariot and my entire family climbs over small children and babies to get to the front of the line, yeah we are that cool. But we know the ice cream will allow us to double our toleration time limit for the sake of the Prince and his summer fun.
Act 5-
Ice Cream finished, we are back at the tables drenched in sweat and melted ice cream happily watching the kids play. El Screamo possibly trips/falls, not sure, either that or at first glance could be suffering a seizure of some sort. The entire park comes running. No blood, no scrapes. Can not identify injury thru his screaming. No words just varied syllables of screams. “My panther eats fries” no that’s not it, although I would scream if a panther ate my fries. “A stranger tricked out my bike?” hrm I don’t think so, cause who would cry over that? Lest I remind you people I speak kid, I speak messed up kid, advanced kid and screaming kid. So I am on the scene. But for the life of me I couldn’t get this kid to stop screaming, neither could his poor guy dad. Then up walked Sam, you know the psychology major. She bends down all caring and loving and says, ” hey little guy I knew a kid that got hurt like this.” and KABAM a moment of silence. wow, this college thing is paying for itself already. The droid is fetching ice for some fictitious wound no one can see and the ice would have been put to better use if it was shoved into El Screamos huge open high decibel mouth.
Then Sam finishes her sentence.. ” that kid died the next day”. El Screamos face melted into pure horror and then contorted into more screams. OK so maybe she does need those last couple of years to fine tune her bedside manner. But it’s my fault I raised my kids on that saying, it works for everything from stubbed toes, to bloody noses. I say it then say, ” so you better have fun while you can.” Clearly she didn’t have the opportunity to finish it and our awesomeness of caring fell a little short in the eyes of El Screamo. After about 10 minutes into his interpretative dance of scream, we weren’t trying to fix him anymore just shut him up.
Act 5
Poor Dude Dad, made the 14 month old walk while he carried El Screamo off towards their vehicle to which he screamed the entire way. To help him get that kid out of there faster show how much we care I walked with the 14 month old and carried their stuff to their vehicle. Poor Dude Dad said to us, this is common, an hourly experience with El Screamo and called him “Daddy’s little Drama Queen” … hrm… so maybe Poor Dude Dad gets an award for his calm cool patience but I am thinking that El Screamo will either a) fulfill the drama queen prophecy or do a flip and be like Johnny Cashs song , “Boy named Sue”.
Act 6
We packed up the prince and headed for the home front, thankful that the prince is not El Screamo.
Thanks to Sam for her cartoon of the interpretive dance of El Screamo..