A Very Dangerous Situation
Last week was Spring Break, which explains my absence from this blog for the last several days.
Hubs worked Tuesday through Saturday, the kids were home, and it was up to me to entertain them. All day. Every day. In addition to writing 15 posts “in my free time” for The Stir.
Yeah. That was a fun week.
By the end of it, I felt like I had been run over by a mac truck. But! The kids were happy and that’s what matters, right? Right?!
Anyway, we celebrated Bruiser’s birthday on Sunday and Monday with a low-key playdate party, cupcakes at preschool, and a family dinner at Chuck E. Cheese. During the rest of the week, we went to an indoor playcenter! We met friends at the playground! We went to the library! We went back to Chuck E. Cheese for a party celebrating its new and improved pizza! We went to Warner Park! We went to a birthday party at a gymnastics center! We went to McDonalds! We had friends over! We had movie nights! We read many, many books!
And we spent a day with friends at the zoo!
Along with every other family in Nashville!
Regular readers out there know we go to the zoo A LOT. We’re members and so I try to take the kids at least once a month– sometimes more. We love going on sunny days during the winter months, when the zoo is all but empty and we can pretend like we run the place. So this time around during Nashville schools’ spring break and on one of the first warm spring days of the year, with nearly every spot in the massive parking lot filled, with long lines at the entrance, the bathrooms, the carousel, and the restaurant, with sweaty, slow-moving bodies everywhere I turned, and with Bruiser alternately zipping off through the crowds and begging to be carried, I felt a little cranky.
And so when I sat down with Bruiser on a tube slide at the zoo’s playground only to encounter three “precious” little girls climbing up the slide toward us from the opposite direction…
I wasn’t having it.
The girls were impeccably dressed in coordinating smocked dresses and big hairbows, so I said in my best Nice Lady Voice, “Oh girls, you can’t come up the slide like that! Goodness, it could be very dangerous! Someone could come down the slide and hit you and knock you down and you could all be hurt!”
“Move over!” the lead girl, who looked to be about five, said in return.
“Go back down the slide now,” I said, smiling through gritted teeth as they attempted to step over (and on) us to get by.
“We won’t,” the second girl said. “You can’t tell us what to do!”
I blew a piece of hair out of my eyes. “Well then, I’m going to find your mother and tell her,” I said levelly.
The girls gave me looks of loathing before turning and scooting back down the slide. “The nerve!” I said, pushing off and looping around and around with Bruiser in my lap. And the nerve got worse!
They were waiting for Bruiser and me at the bottom!
“What did you mean you were going to tell our mom?” the five-year-old demanded, her gigantic grosgrain hair bow bobbing with indignation. The other two girls, twins who looked a year or two older, stood behind her like identical pouting henchmen.
I put my hands on my hips. No more Mrs. Nice Lady. “I mean that it’s against the rules to go up a tube slide. It’s not safe. And if you won’t listen to me, I think your mother will be very interested to know what you insist on doing!”
The girl said nothing, but continued staring at me meanly, her arms crossed. I stared back, but I have to admit, I was starting to get a little scared. The kid had a monogram on the front of her dress, for heaven’s sake. M. Her name was probably Makinzee. Or McKinnsy. Or Mackennzye. Or maybe even Makkinnzzee. Anyway, by all rights, she should have heard my words and run for the hills.
But instead there she was, giving it back as good as she got. After a long, awkward moment, I broke eye contact with her and looked off beyond her shoulder.
“Oh let’s see,” I said. “I’m sure it won’t be too difficult to find your mom.” I strode off purposefully toward a horde of mommies chatting on the enclosure surrounding the playground. The girls darted away in the opposite direction.
“Well that takes care of that,” I muttered to myself, taking my son by the hand. “Come on, Bruiser! Let’s go on the rope ladder again!” I said, smiling. I had no intention of actually finding the mother of those girls and tattling on them. I’ve found that moms don’t really take that sort of thing very well, particularly moms who dress their daughters like Mary Engelbreit characters.
But those girls didn’t have to know that.
Bruiser and I circled back around the playground and I managed to find the mom friend who’d joined me with her kids for the day. As we chatted, my eyes roamed over to the tube slide– and damned if that five-year-old wasn’t standing at the bottom with her eyes on me, getting ready to climb back up it.
“Hey!” I shouted. “I’ve got my eye on you!”
My mom friend turned and watched the girl as she ran off. Then she looked back at me in confusion.
“Just a little uh, tube slide situation,” I said, laughing weakly. “I’ve got it all under control.” Still, I moved over a bit to where I could keep a close eye on the slide as we talked. I was not going to be beaten by a five-year-old. Not today. Not ever.
“So then you just add a little sour cream,” I continued to my friend, “and a squeeze of lemon and chopped onions and…” I stopped short, seeing the girl edge back up to the slide, looking at me warily. Slowly, I pointed two fingers at my eyes and turned my two fingers toward the girl. Watching! You! I mouthed. She ran off again.
At this point, I had thoroughly freaked out my mom friend and so I quickly tried to debrief her before she had a chance to text any of her friends about me. “These girls were coming up the tube slide,” I said, “and I told them very nicely that they needed to go back down or someone would get hurt and–”
The girl had come back to the slide a third time. She looked at me warily, then put one foot up on it and grabbed the sides with both hands.
“…AND I HAVE JUST CALLED THE ZOOKEEPER AND HE SAYS HE IS ON HIS WAY TO DEAL WITH THIS VERY DANGEROUS TUBE SLIDE SITUATION!!” I shrieked angrily to my friend, waving a finger in the air for emphasis.
It worked. The girl made like a banana and I didn’t see her ever again.
Come to think of it, though, I haven’t seen or heard from my mom friend since that day, either.
Weird…
