At The Amusement Park

Yesterday I took Josie and her friend, Nora, to the amusement park for the day. This was her trip in lieu of the ridiculous party that parents seem to be required to throw for their kids, and which I am tired of doing. I think she was sick of it, too, because every time I suggested an idea of what to do for her birthday, all I got was, 'nah...'. Finally, I told her that for what I spent on a party, I could probably take her and a friend out for a day to either a nearby museum or to the amusement park, and Cha-Ching! We had a winner. Her birthday was actually about a month ago, but she wanted to wait until the water park portion was open, and it was just easiest to go during the week.

Luckily, not all the area schools are out yet, so the place was nowhere near as crowded as it will be, say, next week, and we were able to get on the rides in fairly short order. I should amend that - THEY were able to get on. I, being the third wheel, rarely went on the rides, which was just fine with me, thank you. I was amazed at how brave my baby has gotten!!! Also, this was the first year that she's been tall enough to go on the Big rides, like the crazy coasters and such, and they did them ALL. They went forewards, backwards, around loops, dangled from what seemed like the international space station height-wise and plummeted to earth, you name it. I went on some things with them, but I have an intense fear of heights, so I opted not to go on a lot of things, but rather witness their near-death from a shady spot nearby, in case I had to describe the scene to the police later.

In doing so, I had ample time to watch people. I love doing this, because it's usually more interesting than anything else in the park. The things I saw, wow. I have to say, many people out there obviously don't own mirrors, because holy crap! I mean, there are things that anyone can wear anytime, things that some people can wear some of the time, and other things that most people have no business shoving their pint-a-day butts into (I fall into this category, but at least I acknowledge it!). It seems to me that the people that have this problem the most are teenage girls and older women. Those of us with smaller children have to wear more sensible clothes out of necessity, I suppose, since it's hard to chase a kid while wearing a glorified band-aid and dental floss. Anyway, I realized yesterday that there's a fourth category: things that NO ONE should wear to an amusement park water area. So, while I was sitting waiting, I came up with a few basic rules for the amusement-attire challenged:

1. If you plan on going on a big inner tube to be flushed down what is basically a giant toilet bowl of a water slide, PLEASE don't wear things that are held together by strings unless you are comfortable with the entire world a) seeing you entirely naked at the bottom and b) having everyone watch you do the 'pick of shame' as you remove said strings from the deepest recesses of your rear cavity.

2. If you are a larger girl, wearing board shorts over your suit will NOT hide this fact. They will in fact make you look several sizes larger once they're wet and plastered to your thighs, making you walk like a duck.

3. If something is tight BEFORE it's wet, please take into consideration how it will feel/look when it becomes so! Bathing suit muffin tops are NOT sexy.

and finally,

4. Please refrain from walking with your hand tucked into the backside of your partner's bathing suit, male or female. I do not care if you're in love, hormone crazed, or just plain crazy; that's not a pocket, and I don't want to think about that when I'm getting onto a ride where I'm going to have to use the same hand rail you have just handprinted with your partner's butt-cooties! Get a car, get a room, and get some hand sanitizer!

In other news, Josie's friend Nora has an interesting personality quirk: she makes up illnesses for attention. This makes it very difficult to know when to believe her. A few months ago, she actually told her parents that she was having trouble seeing, and they freaked out because her brother has a condition where he gets benign tumors. After trips to the ophthalmologist and to get an MRI, it was obvious that she'd lied. Mysteriously, her 'problem' went away within a week, as soon as she started getting all the extra attention from friends and family. Yesterday she tried it out on me, first saying that she was getting a painful rash on her legs (she wasn't), then saying that she had a terrible headache, when five minutes later (after she'd gotten some serious attention from Josie) in the car she was bouncing around and laughing. Interestingly enough, she didn't try the headache thing on me, although I could hear her whispering it to Josie, probably because the rash thing hadn't worked on me. So, today I had a little talk with Josie about how everyone has their faults, and that Nora's is obviously that she likes attention, so not to get so worked up over things that Nora tells her are wrong, because they're probably not, and we shouldn't encourage her to make things up. For heaven's sake, it's not like she wasn't already getting a lot of attention - she and Josie were the only kids with me, and we were all together all day! Her parents have their hands full, because that habit will get her into a lot of trouble someday. As it is, I barely know when to believe her. Otherwise, she's a perfectly nice girl, though, and she and Josie get along well. I'm good friends with her parents, and they're already aware of the problem, so I'm not going to say anything to them, unless they bring it up, because I think it could be awkward.