Monday, March 31, 2014

Long, slow walk

I took Paul to a new park on Friday to meet up with friends from church. Turns out the park is pretty nice, with a little zip-line, some quasi-natural features, and really a pretty  good range of activities for kids from toddlers up to probably pre-teens. We had a good time, stayed for about two hours, at which point the gathering started breaking up.

Just as we were getting ready to go Paul decided he wanted a drink of water.

What is it with kids and water? Water comes out and suddenly kids flock together. It's amazing. Within minutes the kids had figured out how to turn the drinking fountain into a water gun and were happily soaking each other.

After a bit Paul, who hates being wet, took off his shirt. At that point I decided it was really truly time to go home (we are in Australia and it was the middle of the day. No need to push up Paul's skin cancer risk, right?). So, I asked one of the other moms to watch him while I took our bag of junk to the car so I'd only have to wrangle Paul instead of wrangling both a recalcitrant kid and a big bag 'o crap.

On my way back I saw this little blonde-headed kid running around in nothing but red underpants. A few seconds later the underpants followed and everyone in the park was left with no question about the circumcision status of my child.

I gathered up Paul's clothes and, trying hard to be stern, pointed him in the direction of the car and sent him off. He sauntered off, a hand on one hip, swinging his other arm like he belonged on a runway.

I probably would have just giggled a little under my breath, but this other group of parents in the park started cat-calling.

"Look at that slow, confident walk!"

"Where'd you get your looks from, your mommy or your daddy?"

Sigh.

Did I mention I had a full bladder?

Yeah, I had to stop. I had to sit down on my heel as if I were still 10 to keep from peeing myself because I was laughing so hard. I couldn't say anything to the other parents, couldn't even look at them because I was cracking up at this excruciatingly Paul moment.

When we finally made it to the car I just tossed his naked butt into his car seat and drove us home.