"Don't let it smell your fear!" - Artie, The Adventures of Pete and Pete

 

Pugsley, wearing glasses with enough magnification to let him see through walls. His goal? To find all of the cookies in the house.

After Christmas, we took a trip to go see The Mrs.’ parents, on their 34,324 acre ranch somewhere in Zanzibar or Tanganyika. Sarah Palin has no idea where either of these places are, but Joe Biden is pretty sure they were our main opponents in WW IV, when Franklin Roosevelt defeated the Klingon Empire.

Anyhow, we got in the car and headed out of Houston. Sixteen hours of tough seventy-mile-an-hour driving later, we’d nearly made it out of Houston. Thankfully, traffic was light that day.

After driving over the river and through the woods to Grandmama’s house we went. Unfortunately, Pugsley had ingested approximately 83 ounces of unapproved Super Big Gulp®. We discovered this when every five minutes he would frantically indicate that his youthful bladder would explode with the force of a hurriquakanoado (a hurriquakanoado is the simultaneous combination of a hurricane, earthquake, volcano, and tornado, or, every news network’s dream come true).

After finally getting our passports out at the Texas-New Mexico (or was it Oklahoma?) border, we finally drove through another state or two and reached our ultimate destination.

There is no love more pure than that of a three-year-old for his Grandparents, primarily because those bonds don’t involve nearly as much standing in the corner as the parent/child relationship, and a whole lot more, “Well, if you eat all of that broccoli, you won’t have any room for cookies.”

For my part, this part of the vacation was exactly that – vacation. I slept, ate ham, slept some more, ate more ham, and then watched people cooking ham on the Food Channel™. Occasionally, I’d nap on the couch. The Boy and Pugsley basked in the glow of Grandparental attention, which culminated with Pugsley disassembling Grandpa’s television and then reassembling it so it was now an HD version, and could pick up signals from intergalactic sources. My Father In Law can now watch the Andromedan version of “Two and a Half Zxclormecks.”

We took The Boy and Pugsley out to the park on a glorious (and fairly warm) New Year’s Day. They hit the swings, slides, and other various kid-powered playground toys with youthful vigor. Until it came time to slide down the fireman’s pole attached to one of the toys.

Pugsley, with all the bravado that a three-year-old can muster, indicated that he wanted to slide on down. It’s a drop of about 10 feet, so, knowing that he just might forget to hang on while in mid-slide, I said, “no.”

The Boy indicated he’d like to ride. I told him, “Yes.”

The Boy climbed to the top part of the structure and then looked down into the gaping chasm that was the 10’ from platform to ground.

“I don’t want to do it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m scared.”

“Well, that’s not really a good reason,” I responded. “You’ve seen other people do it. It’s your turn.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes. You have to. Otherwise you’ll be even more afraid next time. You don’t want a fear of playground equipment chasing you around forever, do you?”

Eventually, after much cajoling, threatening and outright blackmail, he slid down the fireman’s pole.

On the way to the car, he said, “That was fun. I’ll have to do that next time.”

Not sure when we’re heading back, since the newscasters have me scared to drive during hurriquakanoado season . . .