Jon’s birthday was filled with so much joy and excitement that I can’t put it all down into one post. For part 1, I will focus on the “water” portion of our day.

We went to a local amusement park called “Lagoon” on Wednesday. That morning we all slept in a little late so we were really scrambling to get ready in order to get to the park, before noon, with our Coke cans, for the $5 off Early Bird special. So Jon was calling to the kids “Put your swimsuits on and give me the clothes you want to wear after. I’ll put them in this duffel bag.” Ever the responsible parent, he was packing and making sure everything was in order for his birthday outing; a job I should have already done the night before, were I a better spouse. But that’s neither here nor there… Zoe’s swim suit and my swim suit were still very damp from swimming the day before. I laid mine out across the bed to let it air dry a little before we left. Zoe, well, I’m not sure what she did with hers, but she put on shorts and a shirt, and then proceeded to give Jon another set of shorts and a shirt to put in the duffel bag. Needless to say, we got 15 miles up the road before we realized that neither Zoe nor I had a swimsuit. Jon vowed that we would all swim together on his birthday. So we stopped at Ross Dress for Less in Centerville. Zoe and I were told to “tuck and roll”, find two girly swimsuits, and get back to the car pronto so we would still make the Early Bird Special. The boys waited in the car and talked about how silly the girls were to forget their swimsuits on the way to a water park. Zoe and I combed the ghetto racks at Ross for some suitable swim attire. What crap. There was nothing. Number 1, I will not let my five year old wear a bikini. Number 2, I don’t WANT to wear a bikini. And what do you know: bikini’s, bikini’s everywhere. I found one Ariel suit in a size 6, yanked it off the rack and proceeded to tell Zoe how cute it was, and reminded her how much she likes Ariel. She—in actuality—is very neutral to Ariel, but it was the only size 6 one piece in the store. I didn’t care if it had a picture of dogs urinating on hydrants, that’s the suit she was getting. Then we moved on the ladies suits. I had two choices: XXXXL suits that were made for the over 60 crowd (think very LARGE, PINK hibiscus flower prints… the kind of swimsuit you’d want to use as a jimmy-rigged parachute if you were jumping from the 40th floor of a blazing skyscraper), and two racks of bikini’s. Nothing matching, either. Just a row of bottoms and a row of tops. I am imagining Jon in the parking lot laying on the horn, so I find a brown and pink bottom that looks like it just may cover most of my ass, and then searched for a top that also has some brown and pink. I find a top…in a large. People, I am only a medium top on my very best day, usually a small… but never, ever a large. But whatever. I take it, and I grab a white dress/swim cover-up thingy. $54 later, Zoe and I are racing back to the car with our ghetto suits that we will probably only ever wear this one time.

We get to Lagoon in time for Early Bird, we get our locker, get changed, and rent two tubes. We get up to the little height marker posts at the front of the tube ride lines and learn that Zoe is about 2 inches too short to ride any of the tube rides. Poor Zoe. So the boys grab the tubes, yell “sorry” to us over their shoulders, and run for the tube ride lines. Zoe and I look at each other and frown. I remind her that it is Daddy’s birthday and that he needs to have a good time, and that she and I will find something else cool to do for a little while. Well, as it turns out, she wasn’t really tall enough to do anything cool. Except the Lazy River, and we had no tubes in which to ride the Lazy River.

Wow.

So I sucked it in, shoulders back, and thought skinny thoughts. Zoe and I got to the top, and I put Zoe in her tube and she started freaking out a bit. I assured her that it was going to be sooooo much fun. They sent her down first, and then me. I should explain here that this particular slide had a series of short “drops” and then little pools. So you would kind of slide, then a pool, slide, then a pool. Well, at the first “pool”, Zoe’s tube overturned and she went under. She was caught under her tube for a second until I got to her and pulled her up. She completely freaked out. I mean, screaming like she was dying. People just kept coming down behind us on their tubes, and I tried to kind of move us and our tubes out of the way, but there was a current, and it was tough. There was a kid lifeguard there who tried to help me get Zoe back on her tube. Well, there was no friggin way that she was letting anyone put her back on a tube. At this point, the kid said, “Well, do you want to walk her down?” Huh? You can walk down? I suppose it makes some sense. How did this kid-guard get here without actually riding a tube? So he climbs up over the side of the tube and tells me to hand up Zoe to him. There is rotting, rickety, wooden scaffolding all around the slides, and on this rickety scaffolding are some rickety stairs. Really steep, shaking, rickety stairs. Zoe flipped out about have to walk down these stairs. I tried to—calmly—explain to her that there were only two ways down: rickety stairs or on a tube. She chose the stairs.

I now give you this mental image to ponder: me, in a string bikini (a LARGE top, no less), climbing some scaffolding with two inner tubes and a child who is screaming: I’m going to die! I’m going to die!  

I gave up the whole “suck it in, shoulders back” thing right about the time I was lifting my child up to a stranger standing on rickety scaffolding.

Zoe has vowed to “Never ride a tube slide ever again in her whole, entire life. Whole. Entire.”

When I’m done cutting up and burning this damn ghetto bikini I will pause to write Part 2.

1 Comment »

1. Oh my goodness. This was too funny.

   You are laughing about it now, right?

   I’m with you on the bikini thing - I won’t put Julia in one either.

   Comment by Leslie — June 21, 2007 @ 8:29 pm

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