The Park Protestor

As I may my way down to the neighbor park, I had a feeling that the slight supervision my kids where under may not be enough to keep them fully in-line.  Finding, to little surprise, Dougie (the baby my two kids were suppose to keeping an eye on) hanging out by himself in the baby swing. Michael (the 14 year old), Serena (8) and Jacob (3) carefully scooping handfuls of soft, crumply dirt and delivering it to its doom at the battered end of an otherwise perfectly clean slide.  I don’t even have to mention, but I guess I will anyways, that both they and their clothes were filthy and by that I mean beyond the norm.  The three of them saw me and continued to dirt slide like it was all the rage for Santa’s little angels these days.  The oldest two took the eventually “blah, blah, blah, speech” with a fair amount of acceptance.

‘Hey look Dad’s explaining yet another rule, he’s so crazy!’ 

One, of course, insisted on storming around and laying down the demand of “One more time!”  Negotiations on this matter had only just begun when the chief negotiator for the pro-dirt-on-slide delegates stormed off and made the ultimate show of support for the dirty bottom crew.  With his father telling him this was a ‘bad idea’, Jacob stormed the slides defenses.  Tossing dirt in front of him after reaching the jump-off point.

All the while yelling “Oonne Mmmoorree Tiiime, Dddaadd!” 

For those of you unfamiliar with the classic storming the enemy/slow motion action scene, Jacob has no stutter problem.  Only a thin-skinned, need to punch, extremely grumpy (especially after a nap), false sense of Godliness and overall his mother’s wonderful mood swings.

Of course, the list of the boy’s qualities goes on.  Such as the greatest little hug and ‘please feel free to kiss my cheek’ goodbye in the world.  His snuggling abilities rank among the world’s greatest, real Olympic qualifying stuff. He does so love to share and makes more than a three-year-old boy’s fair allotment of attempts.  The way he throws pure, untaught snapping hooks at full ‘knock out’ speed is what makes my father’s heart burst and ooze with eye-weeping pride.  Those, in a nutshell, are reasons I would work my hands to the bone to clothe him and lay down my life to keep him from harm.  Even if he had decided to represent the opposing side on this particular issue.

My grandmother tells me that that is exactly how I looked and acted at his age.  Man, the groupies I must have had, because I see his and am just a bit, nah, real jealous of that little devilish smile that knows more than you think and reels the girls in like prize winning large-mouth bass. 

So, back to the instant playground battlefield, there was no jail time handed down for the unlicensed and overly dramatic protest.  Well a dad’s got to forgive and forget sometimes, when his son pushes just a bit, in that ‘I am a Man, dad!’ kind of way, and our ‘proper raising and then the fun after rules are meet’ heart smiles just a little.  Of course, they always walk off in chest pounding triumph and you and I both track them down to re-explain the “rules”.