My left foot is wet and cold – oh yeah, it's Sunday

Hello all – yesterday my family and I, along with some friends went to Santa's Village in Jefferson NH. It is an amusement park with a Christmas theme, for those of you that have not figured that out yet.

Anyway, we were fortunate enough to have free passes as our friends did as well. So, with the exception of gas, snacks and few trinkets at the park here and there, it was not an expensive trip. My Scottish heritage wouldn't allow me to spend all of that much most of the time anyway.

So, being December and just on the tail of a few snowstorms and then a thaw ( was about 40 -some degrees yesterday) so snow , ice , water and slush all over the park. The kids were smarter than I as they had winter boots on. I had on my half-boot things – look like shoes but waterproof like boots – Duck Boots – leftover cheesy fashion from the 1980's. Needless to say, these things have seen better days so the left one tends to leak after a while. If you have ever had to walk around with a wet foot in the cold and damp, you know how uncomfortable this can be. Serves me right, actually.

So, the story goes – the park was not overly busy, but there were a 'few' people there. Lots of kids, of course. Average age of people in the park was probably in the middle 20's, since most parents were 40 somethings and the kids were mostly 10 and under....

...well...

I was waiting in a very, stressing the word VERY short line to get my kids and I onto the bumper cars. There was a railing separating the line from the outside of the ride. I noticed this woman standing against the half-wall, watching the kids , most likely hers , driving a bumper car. I noticed two things about her: she was tall and very thin, and dressed like she was about 38 going on 'college-student'. She had this look of a sort of 'fuck-you-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on-and-everyone-that-knows-you' on her face. Not a bad looking girl but just misery written all over her face. Jordan and I were waiting patiently and the ride just ended. She walked past us (she was standing there when we got there, so I assumed that she was waiting to get on the ride) and her daughter came out of the ride and began walking down along the outside of the railing to go and get in line again. This woman reached over the rail and grabbed her arm, the daughter stopped in the puddle and dripping snow-melt . She casually said to her pre-teen daughter “...hey, climb over...here...go again with your..”

I was fucking beside myself!! I could not believe it!! At the risk of sounding like a Monty Python sketch, in my day, my step-monster would have cold-cocked me upside the head, made me climb back over the fence and then apologize to everyone in the fucking park for my rude behavior. Holy Shiite, Batman!

Now, my kids are far from perfect but manners are the most important thing I think any parent should teach their kid. So, now , that girl is going to think that it is okay to cut in front of someone at the mall, movie lineup, school, or where ever. When she is older and driving a car, she will think it is okay to scoop a parking spot from someone at the mall during a really busy time. This could very well cause road rage, or even in extreme cases for someone that is fucking crazy enough and angry enough to pull a gat on her and give her a third eye-socket between the two that she was born with. Then we have an even bigger problem. Murder, weapons charge, cleanup of brain tissue and skull bits, not to mention the funeral that her family has to attend. All because her mom was too Goddamn selfish to have her wait in line for 5 or 10 minutes.

People, I may sound like John F Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr, but we are on this little globe with the other 3 some billion folks that are sharing it with us. My dad used to have this little saying that I think is from Aesop or Kipling:

“Do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you.”

Peace