“How much does it cost?” I asked.
We hopped online and the admission fee was $28 per person. Kids were NOT free, which was bullshit. I immediately pictured plunking down $112 and watching my kids demand to leave after five minutes of staring at clown fish.
“That can’t be right,” I said. “Twenty-eight bucks? That’s insane. Who can pay that?”
“Jenny down the street got a family membership. They go all the time.”
“What does that cost?”
“A hundred fifty, I think.”
“JEEEEEESUS. Is that per person?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why does everything have to cost something? This is crap.”
I always had a hard time coming up with an excursion that was new and interesting and didn’t cost irritating amounts of money. In the end, we usually succumbed to wandering aimlessly around a mall, or going to a movie, or attempting (and failing) to eat lunch at a modestly priced restaurant. I looked up movie listings and there was nothing bland and shitty enough to be appropriate for little children.
“You could just stay here and do a craft project,” my wife said.
“No way.” I wasn’t the kind of parent who could come up with brilliant craft projects for my children to do for five hours straight. Family magazines are littered with these ideas. MAKE A PIRATE BOAT OUT OF OLD MILK CARTONS! No fucking way. I wasn’t gonna sit at the dining room table for that long cutting out pictures of parrots and getting dabs of Elmer’s glue on my elbows.
“Oh, let’s just take them to the playground,” my mom suggested. So we did.
I have a vision in my head of what the perfect playground is like. It rests on a twelve-inch-thick cushion of mulch—that soft, recycled tire mulch that would be fun to jump on while stoned. And the dream playground equipment is never wet from rain or morning dew, because dew ruins everything. There are swings—many of them, including big kid swings, baby swings with nice wide foot holes that never trap baby shoes, and none of those evil plastic yellow swings that are meant for handicapped kids but are often occupied by fat, tired parents looking for a place to sit. The swings at my dream playground swing themselves so that I don’t tire out after five seconds of pushing my kid high enough to kick the clouds. And there are enough swings to go around so that I don’t have to worry about other shithead parents being oblivious and letting their kid hog the swing for eight hours straight. You can try to stand with your kid near these parents and get them to overhear you saying, “Now, Johnny, as soon as this nice young lad is off the swing, you’ll get your turn,” and it won’t matter. Those people never seem to take your subtle cue. They’re off in Shitheadland, never to return.
Our playground for the day was not my dream playground. Much more of a Shitheadland playground. It had four swings, which wasn’t much but at least gave it Real Playground status. But it had many other unwelcome hazards. There was a merry-go-round, which was not a carousel but rather a giant metal plate with handles that kids used to subject each other to gravitational forces of up to 5 Gs. There was a play structure that rose up ten feet in the air, with wide openings along the barriers that allowed for toddlers to fall to their death at any moment. The structure was labeled for kids five to twelve. Well, what am I supposed to do with a two-year-old, Mr. Playground Designer? Have him build mud huts over to the side?
To get to the playground, we had to walk along a busy street and cross under a filthy highway overpass. My daughter, now five, took her bike and blasted ahead of us, with me shouting at her to stay on the innermost portion of the sidewalk so that a bus driver wouldn’t run her down. She didn’t listen to me, but I kept shouting at her anyway because my parents were there and I wanted them to feel like I had control of the situation. My son, now two, trailed behind her on a tricycle. I occasionally used my foot to guide him away from the road, like a shopping cart with a bad wheel.
The entrance to the playground was blocked by a series of bikes and scooters lying on the ground. I cleared them out of the way so that my kids could run through. Then I looked around for the children who’d left their bikes lying around so that I could murder them with my icy stare. No such luck. My parents and I took to a nearby bench that was already capable of causing third-degree burns because the entire playground was exposed to the sun. My daughter went running onto a rope bridge. My son followed her and immediately got his feet tangled in the ropes and was stuck on the bridge, crying. I assume the rope bridge was added to the playground at the last moment by some kind of giant spider goddess who needed a surefire trap for luring human children.
I untangled my son and returned to my spot on the bench next to my folks, who offered a running analysis of the children as they watched them in action.
“She plays so well by herself,” my mom said of the girl.