Amusement Park Malaise

My fellow bloggers are sufficiently youthful enough to lack a small army of miniature people who scream "DADDDYYYY!" in the most hair raising fashion for no reason at all.

I am most definitely stupid. Not because I have three children (although, that has definitely suggested itself to my mind a few times). No, my stupidity manifested itself this year in the form of a promise.

I made this promise at a time of near maximum vulnerability and confusion--no, Foo Daddy, NOT maximum...I have very happily made and later just as happily kept promises that were extracted from me while THAT sort of thing was happening. Why did you have to go there anyway?

No, this promise was made on a dreary February Sunday afternoon. I was lying on the couch in a semi carbohydrate coma watching the endish part of a football game. My kids were not taking a nap--which is a violation of some international treaty or other--and were energetically blasting in and out of my pleasantly numb consciousness.

A particularly horrifying shreik brought me dizzily to the upright on the couch. I sort of whacked at the adrenalized hairs on the back of my neck with a hand still tingling from being trapped under a buttock for 2 1/2 hours (no, Foo, NOT someone else's buttock. My own, you prevert!).

"Daddy," the shrieker said, "When it's summer will you take us to the Lagoon, pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease, pleeeeeeeease? It's really cool and my friends went therelastyearandtheyplayedinthewaterandrodelotsofridesandate hot dogs and drankpopandthrewupontheferriswheel. Please?"

I am quite certain that some of the most heinous dictators of the last 100 years have used small children as their final weapon of torture and persuasion. I can hear Mussolini say, "If the small child method doesn't work, then garrote him and boil him in wine of the upper Tuscany valleys. He is incorrigible".

Well, I was very corrigible as it turned out. I must have mumbled something like, "uh, yeah...uh, sure, honey, that sounds like lots of fun."

The preceding is a lengthy way of saying that I apparently promised to take my whole battalion to a place of wonder, adventure and excitement called The Lagoon. I am a man who keeps his word--not, perhaps without reviewing the contract for any possible loopholes and maybe even trying to reneg with a piteous, slobbering whine.

So, we loaded up last week and drove down to a place of wonder, advent...oh, I already did the advertisement, didn't I...to this spot down in Utah called Ogden. If you lived in the northwest part of the US and hadn't filed/paid your taxes for awhile, you would know that Ogden has a really big IRS center. As far as I can see, that's about all they have. For example, I couldn't locate a Starbucks to save my soul. Must be such a small market for coffee vendors due to the nearly 100% Mormon population that they don't even bother.

I've spent so much time talking about my promise that I will save the notes on my actual sojourn at the Lagoon for a Part II.

Until then, I'm going to go lubricate my sunburn.