up and down

I wish I would have had the camera with me this morning. The park, Sam's outfit....

The Trosky park has monkey bars, an ancient merry-go-round that has been painted at least a half dozen times, the tall swings with rubber tire seats and one teeter-totter and one modern plastic "safe" slide. It's an old-school park for the most part with all the old fun park toys that have been removed from most parks because a few kids fell off . I realized I needed to get the the post office there (hours on weekdays 7:30 - 10:30 a.m) quick before it closed. Usually unless a major snowfall or rain prevents us, we have to stop at the park before we make the 1-2/3 mile trip home. Then sometime between several runs on the slide and turns on the merry-go-round, we have to check what's in the fence at the place that borders the park. I think whoever lives there must be in the foster care program for farm animals. There is something different every time. Today there were two donkeys. Anyway, then it's back to the park.

Sam and Priya are close in weight so the teeter-totter worked perfect. My memories of the teeter-totter are that I was always at least 15 or 20 pounds too heavy for whoever was on the other side, so hopefully this fixture of the park will be a good memory for my children. Sam with his red stocking hat (like the kind the bad guys on movies wear), overalls that are too narrow at the bottom to go over his blue rubber chore boots so one leg is unsnapped half-way up his leg and the other is stuffed inside the boot, is sitting on one side of the teeter-totter saying, "Up". Before I can coach him with "down", he says it: "down" clear as a bell. I did a double take to make sure some neighbor kid hadn't hopped up there when my back was turned.

But not being one to be real daring, within a few seconds, the next word out of his mouth was "off".