Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Fun and Fear at the Carnival

As the old yiddish proverb goes - 'Man Plans, G-d Laughs'. We planned to take our sons to a local children's museum yesterday, but unfortunately, life threw us a curve - my wife's great aunt passed away. She lived into her 90's, but her time had come, and we spent the 4th escorting her to the world to come. Thankfully my parents were able to babysit, and the boys enjoyed spending the time with them. Yet despite knowing that I had a valid excuse for not doing anything special for July 4th with my son. I still felt guilty.

But then I remembered reading in the paper that one of the nearby towns was having a week-long carnival. I bucked his bedtime and took mitch. If he had been 10 or 12, the carnival might have been a major dissapointment - great adventure it was not, but he is 3 and a half, and he loved every minute of it.

After a pretty sad day, he helped provide me with some cheer. But there was one thing at the carnival that scared me. As he was on his last ride, a Fire fighter from a local fire department was talking to the ride operator, and offered him a beer. I was flabbergasted at the two men, and the notion that this ride operator was willing to drink alcohol while operating a ride that my child was on. I think that the firefighter caught me eavsdropping, because he started feeling me out to see if I was a cop.

I had no proof that the ride operator was drinking, so I couldn't make an issue of it, but maybe I will think twice before putting my son on those rides next year.



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