And perhaps by tomorrow, I won't feel quite so strongly about the grade-A bee-ah-tch I crossed paths with today.
But I have sortof a philosophy on kids' behavior in public. If I wouldn't allow my child to do it to someone else, then it's unacceptable for someone to do it to my child (hitting, spitting on, throwing things at, etc.). And typically I just move on but today was different. And apparently I don't know the rules . . .
We went to the Dupage County Fair today, because I love it. Actually so does P. Ridiculous amounts of money are spent there (and we don't even ride the rides) but there are so many things we like that I guess it's worth it.
P's favorite place is a Hamman Farms-sponsored 'booth' on grains raised in Illinois. It consists basically of three large tractor tires on their sides, each filled with a grain (corn, soybeans, and wheat). The kids can get in and play with the grains, reminiscent of a sandbox.
On one of our many stops there today (can't just go there once), it was PACKED with little kids from what turned out to be two families there together. They were all barefoot (my kids wear their shoes, I think it's foul to go barefoot in a place where who-knows-who-else has been barefoot and left behind heaven-only-knows-what?) and the girls starting demanding that N take his shoes off. First, I ignored them and when they got really obnoxious, I said, "No, he doesn't have to take his shoes off." Well, then I got, "YES, HE DOES!" and lots of complaining about his feet hitting theirs. So not bothered by that. They want to protect their little piggies, they can wear their shoes. There are no signs saying kids have to take off their shoes and again, it's a FAIR. It's not like someone's *sanitizing* this stuff. Eeeewwww.
Then I realize one of their little boys is throwing handfuls of corn at P, who is asking very politely for the kid to stop. That's not working and none of the three parents (this child actually had both mommy and daddy there, I later learned) with the group are saying squat. So I stepped up and said, "Hey, let's stop throwing corn."
The child climbs out of the corn wheel, into the soybean wheel, and starts picking up handfuls of beans and dropping them on N's head. Who isn't too thrilled. So I step over and say, "Excuse me, does this child belong to you? He's dropping soybeans on my kid . . ." Before I can actually finish saying it, B*tch Mom gives me the biggest, fakest smile, and says (imagine the sarcasm here, she was oozing it), "Oh, yeah, that's really awful!" Huh?
So (Queen of the Comebacks I am not) I went on to tell her that he'd also been throwing corn and I didn't think that was OK, and she continues in her drippy, sweet-as-honey, sarcastic voice, "Well, I'll beat him when I get home!"
The only thing I could come out with (thankfully stammer free) was a sarcastic, "Well, thank you for handling this in such a mature, adult fashion."
There was actually a slightly longer exchange than that because at one point, I said that I don't let my kids do it and I thought perhaps she'd like to know and got a snotty turn in response. She walked off with the parent of the other kids and left her husband behind putting shoes on somebody and D*MN was I tempted to ask, "Is that your wife? You actually put up with her?" but I just couldn't do it.
I did think later that I probably should have responded (when she first said, "Oh, that's just awful!"), "Yeah, I guess you're right; truly awful would be my children growing up to be like you."
Random bits of unschooling, traveling, and trying to notice life's moments with my Italian hubby, our two crazy kids, and more often than not, a glass of wine.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Small town Aurora
I grew up *near* a small town, not even actually *in* the town so I know what a really small town is like. Aurora is decidedly not that. It is the second-largest city in the state of Illinois (which sounds more impressive than it is, I think) and has a definite city personality.
But I have to say that we put on one very small town 4th of July Parade. This is the second year our family has attended - minus the spousal unit this year - and it's just not a big city event. Which makes it more appealing to me for sure.
First of all, the parade is supposed to start at 10 AM. We arrive at 9:15 to secure our spot - which may sound late to folks from say, Arlington Heights, who have been advised to stop reserving their places days in advance and asked to voluntarily wait until 7 PM the night before to stake a curbside claim. In the case of Aurora, we get downtown at 9:15 and I really did think this - "Do we have the right day?" There are huge stretches of street that look like any other normal weekend morning (because everything is closed) and an intersection that I'm pretty sure the parade is supposed to go through isn't even blocked off yet. I am 99.9% sure I have the right day so after verifying the right location via cell with folks we are meeting up with, we put down our blanket and chairs and wait for almost 40 minutes for them to block the intersection for the parade that's allegedly going to start in 5 minutes. Eventually the cars stop flowing so apparently they cut access at the other end. It's just about 10 by this point.
Shortly after 10, a bicycle cop casually rides by. Boys with our group are playing the street, my youngest is trying to join them (and being blocked by me). And here comes a golf cart whizzing around the corner telling the kids to get off the street, here comes the parade.
I suppose most people expect parades to have lots of floats and bands and Shriners in little cars. We get lots of politicians (the mayor went around twice, once as mayor in a carriage and once on foot as candidate for mayor), some church groups, some local businesses (Geek Squad actually had the largest presence in the parade with something like 15 or 16 vehicles - they just kept coming, it was pretty funny), a few Cub Scout packs, and of course, the police and fire trucks. I wish there were more fire trucks.
Some special highlights for us lucky Aurorans -
1. A fire truck from the Aurora Fire Museum. Such a cool place, located about a block from the parade route in the city's first fire station.
2. Some Revolutionary War reenactors who fired their weapons RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. My eldest and my mother were ecstatic. I'm glad I had the presence of mind to cover N's ears.
3. Lots of people handing out all sorts of advertisements - for community theater productions, candidates for office, and churches primarily. The most worthy that we got was for Honor Flight Chicago, an organization that flies veterans, especially WWII veterans, to their memorial in DC, at no cost to the veteran. They've taken two flights from Aurora and have two more scheduled. Very cool stuff. Some of the veterans themselves were in the parade.
There were only two (maybe three?) marching bands and one is a summer band camp. The best was probably West Aurora High School.
One decidedly big city feature of our parade is that the horses (what parade is complete without horses?) are followed by a streetsweeper. Both groups got their own streetsweeper. I'm guessing most small towns have a slightly more manual scooper method for horse-doody clean-up. Us big city folks pull out the big guns.
And the most nagging question for me - who decided that the only way to distribute candy is to fling it on the ground? Everyone who gave out candy did that - threw it, on the ground, at the curb. I guess they don't want to hurt anyone but apparently the streetsweepers are resting before the parade instead of warming up by cleaning the parade route because the street near us was just GROTTY. Yuck, yuck, yuck. My pale green shoes came home black and I had to keep stopping N from picking cigarette butts out of the street. So flinging EDIBLES on the dirty nasty street was, frankly, just gross. I did let my kids eat most of it anyway, though. What kind of mom would I be if I didn't?
But I have to say that we put on one very small town 4th of July Parade. This is the second year our family has attended - minus the spousal unit this year - and it's just not a big city event. Which makes it more appealing to me for sure.
First of all, the parade is supposed to start at 10 AM. We arrive at 9:15 to secure our spot - which may sound late to folks from say, Arlington Heights, who have been advised to stop reserving their places days in advance and asked to voluntarily wait until 7 PM the night before to stake a curbside claim. In the case of Aurora, we get downtown at 9:15 and I really did think this - "Do we have the right day?" There are huge stretches of street that look like any other normal weekend morning (because everything is closed) and an intersection that I'm pretty sure the parade is supposed to go through isn't even blocked off yet. I am 99.9% sure I have the right day so after verifying the right location via cell with folks we are meeting up with, we put down our blanket and chairs and wait for almost 40 minutes for them to block the intersection for the parade that's allegedly going to start in 5 minutes. Eventually the cars stop flowing so apparently they cut access at the other end. It's just about 10 by this point.
Shortly after 10, a bicycle cop casually rides by. Boys with our group are playing the street, my youngest is trying to join them (and being blocked by me). And here comes a golf cart whizzing around the corner telling the kids to get off the street, here comes the parade.
I suppose most people expect parades to have lots of floats and bands and Shriners in little cars. We get lots of politicians (the mayor went around twice, once as mayor in a carriage and once on foot as candidate for mayor), some church groups, some local businesses (Geek Squad actually had the largest presence in the parade with something like 15 or 16 vehicles - they just kept coming, it was pretty funny), a few Cub Scout packs, and of course, the police and fire trucks. I wish there were more fire trucks.
Some special highlights for us lucky Aurorans -
1. A fire truck from the Aurora Fire Museum. Such a cool place, located about a block from the parade route in the city's first fire station.
2. Some Revolutionary War reenactors who fired their weapons RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. My eldest and my mother were ecstatic. I'm glad I had the presence of mind to cover N's ears.
3. Lots of people handing out all sorts of advertisements - for community theater productions, candidates for office, and churches primarily. The most worthy that we got was for Honor Flight Chicago, an organization that flies veterans, especially WWII veterans, to their memorial in DC, at no cost to the veteran. They've taken two flights from Aurora and have two more scheduled. Very cool stuff. Some of the veterans themselves were in the parade.
There were only two (maybe three?) marching bands and one is a summer band camp. The best was probably West Aurora High School.
One decidedly big city feature of our parade is that the horses (what parade is complete without horses?) are followed by a streetsweeper. Both groups got their own streetsweeper. I'm guessing most small towns have a slightly more manual scooper method for horse-doody clean-up. Us big city folks pull out the big guns.
And the most nagging question for me - who decided that the only way to distribute candy is to fling it on the ground? Everyone who gave out candy did that - threw it, on the ground, at the curb. I guess they don't want to hurt anyone but apparently the streetsweepers are resting before the parade instead of warming up by cleaning the parade route because the street near us was just GROTTY. Yuck, yuck, yuck. My pale green shoes came home black and I had to keep stopping N from picking cigarette butts out of the street. So flinging EDIBLES on the dirty nasty street was, frankly, just gross. I did let my kids eat most of it anyway, though. What kind of mom would I be if I didn't?
More Y&G randomness, now at the zoo
Apparently it's my year to just run into people from Youth & Government. Now I'm looking at everyone at Target and in front of me at the grocery store and wondering if they're from Y&G and I somehow don't remember them.
Last Tuesday, with the spousal unit still out of the country (I really need to post about that but it seems like it will take a really long time and I haven't had a really long time to sit down at the computer for a while), I rounded up some free passes and took the boys to Brookfield Zoo. I figured the Stingray Bay exhibit would be a hit with stingray-fascinated N and P always loves the zoo. I apparently made a good choice because N has been asking almost every day since, "We go to zoo today?"
Anyway, we did the stingrays first and that was really cool - one of them totally splashed Bugaboo and I in the face and you really can just lean down and touch them. Totally neat. We wanted to go to the penguins next but I got completely confused and we walked the wrong way and ended up at the dolphins - also a big hit but not the right way.
Course corrected, we were wandering past the new Ibex Island now that they've torn down the old one and moved the ibex to a new home, and as we are walking up to the fence to see what we can see, I realize I'm walking right towards Mike B., advisor from Naperville Central High School. Who also happens to be Assistant Camp Leader Josh's advisor and a sortof co-advisor for Dan-the-Full-Figured-Man. So there's kindof a theme in who I'm running into and it's kindof freaky. Mike's eyes popped out of his head when I told him I'd run into both Josh and Dan the week before at the Arboretum (side note - Josh's eyes popped out of *his* head when I told him on Friday Dan worked at the membership desk, he had no idea). It's definitely strange to see Y&G folks outside of Y&G events but strangely reassuring, too.
So now I'm thinking about future field trips (Centennial Beach in Naperville is coming up next week) and wondering who I might run into there. Eww, that's not a place I want to run into Y&G folks. None of them need to see me in my swimsuit, and vice versa.
Last Tuesday, with the spousal unit still out of the country (I really need to post about that but it seems like it will take a really long time and I haven't had a really long time to sit down at the computer for a while), I rounded up some free passes and took the boys to Brookfield Zoo. I figured the Stingray Bay exhibit would be a hit with stingray-fascinated N and P always loves the zoo. I apparently made a good choice because N has been asking almost every day since, "We go to zoo today?"
Anyway, we did the stingrays first and that was really cool - one of them totally splashed Bugaboo and I in the face and you really can just lean down and touch them. Totally neat. We wanted to go to the penguins next but I got completely confused and we walked the wrong way and ended up at the dolphins - also a big hit but not the right way.
Course corrected, we were wandering past the new Ibex Island now that they've torn down the old one and moved the ibex to a new home, and as we are walking up to the fence to see what we can see, I realize I'm walking right towards Mike B., advisor from Naperville Central High School. Who also happens to be Assistant Camp Leader Josh's advisor and a sortof co-advisor for Dan-the-Full-Figured-Man. So there's kindof a theme in who I'm running into and it's kindof freaky. Mike's eyes popped out of his head when I told him I'd run into both Josh and Dan the week before at the Arboretum (side note - Josh's eyes popped out of *his* head when I told him on Friday Dan worked at the membership desk, he had no idea). It's definitely strange to see Y&G folks outside of Y&G events but strangely reassuring, too.
So now I'm thinking about future field trips (Centennial Beach in Naperville is coming up next week) and wondering who I might run into there. Eww, that's not a place I want to run into Y&G folks. None of them need to see me in my swimsuit, and vice versa.