Thursday, June 15, 2006

Who Wants to Go to the Park? I DON'T!

First day of summer vacay -- what did I do? Did I huddle in the corner as the spawn took over the house, smashing dishes and ripping up couch cushions? Well, kinda, yeah for a little bit... but then, I took them to THE PARK! And not the shitty little park down the road with the river and the duck shit -- I took them to the bigass park that's far away and has a giant wooden castle structure thing, and no trees and it's fucking a million degrees there every goddamn time we go. Whee-hoo.

I knew it would be trouble when we pulled into the parking lot, got out of the car and heard creepy-ice-cream-truck-jingly-killer-music wafting through the air. Fuck. "Dad, can we have ice cream?! Pleeeeez! We never get ice cream from the ice cream truck! If you really loved us, you'd get it for us! Come on! You call yourself a father?!"

So, we walk up the van -- oh, I'm sorry. Did I not mention it wasn't a truck but a sky-blue ice cream VAN! No shit. The creepy quotient increased exponentially with that little twist. And I don't mean to stereotype the typical ice cream vendor, but is it a fucking rule that the dude selling the two dollar crapsicles has to look exactly like John Wayne Gacy -- peeking his fucking greasy-ass head out of the little sliding window, shooting that lazy-eye in my general direction as he croaks out a "Whattyahave?" Fuckin' willies, the guy gave me. Cripes.

And the song that was playing -- I shit you not, it was "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" The dude might as well be playing that "Tubular Bells" song from "The Exorcist." I was so creeped out, the hairs on the back of my neck not only stood up, they burst into flames, then froze, then turned into leather-winged griffins and flew into a hell-mouth that had opened up under the van.

Anywig, Miss O chooses the "Care Bear" misshapen blob of frozen corn syrup death, and Mr. Z chose the one shaped like Spongebob, after his head had been eaten away by advanced stage syphillis. Surprisingly, I didn't buy anything for myself. I figured, one of us had to survive the ordeal to give a description of the frozen-treat pedophile to the cops.

We finally made our way out of the parking lot and into the park. Two hours later, after Miss O finished her crapsicle (I swear, she ate it one ice crystal at a time) they finally started playing.

Everything was fine until I lost sight of Miss O in the giant two-by-four castle thing and then heard her screaming. I ran to the other side and saw her stuck in the middle of the giant, dark green twisty slide, her legs practically in flames because the slide temperature was about 9 million degrees Kelvin. What sick asshole designed this park -- Marquis de Slide?!

Luckily, I had a cold bottle of water in my "man-sack" and I basically had her hold it to her ass until things cooled down. So that was fun.

Then, we made our way to the spinny merry-go-round thing that Mr. Z was DYING to go on. I kept saying, "Dude, I don't think you like spinning things, remember? Are you sure you want to go on this?" But he assured me that HE LOVES SPINNING THINGS! Fine.

They get on the thing and I start spinning it around -- so far so good:



Then some other kids come by, hop on, and they're all shouting for me to "SPIN FASTER! SPIN FASTER!" So, I spun faster, what the shit?! Sure enough, about 20 minutes or so later, Mr. Z yells, "DAD! STOP! I DON'T FEEL SO GOOD!" Yeah? No shit.

He gets off the thing, Miss O wants to keep going, but I take her off, too, and then I fire it back up for the parentless kids who were still commanding me to "SPIN FASTER!"

From that point on, Mr. Z was out of commission. He looked white as a sheet and was pretty miserable. I held back my "I fucking told you"s and we finally headed back home. All in all, a banner park visit. At least no one had to shit while we were there -- at least I dodged that bullet.

Looking back, we probably should've just walked to the duck shit park.

1 comment:

Kim said...

There is nothing--and I mean NOTHING--like a merry-go-round sick.

Poor Mr. Z. I hope he's gotten over the spins. Make sure he understands that the spins, no matter how bad, are always better than the runs.