Sometimes you go to Chuck E. Cheese and end up face to face with a REAL LIVE GIANT ANACONDA who’s sole desire is to swallow your crushed body in one gulp. It’s just one of those things that happens . . . to me.
Yesterday the kids helped with the “crazy extensive wet leaf clean-up project” (we’ve now spent more time cleaning up leaves at our new house that we have spent actually sleeping in it) so we decided to reward them with a little high quality Chuck E Cheese time. Also, our awesome cousins Henry and Arthur were in town, so we wanted to show them a little hyper-fun. When we arrived we quickly discovered that it wasn’t meant to be. There was a LINE OUT THE DOOR to get in the place and you can just imagine what it was like inside. Absolutely frightening…. So we told the kiddos we’d have to make other plans – only 25% of our 4 kids threw a complete NUCLEAR FIT about it, so that was good.
At this point we brainstormed other options, hoping to still show our kids and cousins a little fun. I made the lame proposals of the mall or bookstore (a family favorite) and then Traci spit out something totally random that piqued tons of interest from the kids and utter fear from daddy -
REPTILE MUSEUM (click the link)
I kept my protest limited to my inside my head voice. You see, you don’t know anybody who is as petrified of snakes (which happen to be reptiles) as HTF, but I didn’t want to voice that weakness too loudly. But I was pretty sure there’d be some snakes there since there’s a giant mock King Cobra head above the entrance to the place. I was banking on one of our kids misbehaving so I’d have to sit in the car with them. This technique is usually quite successful for me. Well, no such luck. Instead, I had a little girl who needed the bathroom and my introduction to the museum was the lady at the front desk telling me that the restroom was “straight back, all the way through the snake section, just after the Anaconda.” Oh good. On the walk back, I’m telling you friends, I almost passed out. Sydney had to talk me into leaving the bathroom by pulling on my hand. embarrassing? Yeah. But what are ya gonna do? Oh I survived it, but just barely. They had the 10 DEALIEST SNAKES there and my 4 year old took me by the hand from cage to cage and pounded on the glass. Sheesh.
Anyway, I don’t know where the phobia came from, but I confirmed that it’s quite real. The kicker is that I paid money for that experience – kinda like a root canal I guess. But the little kids all had fun (I guess that was the point)!
PS – I was gonna post a snake picture on the blog, but did a search and was too freaked out at the images, so you’ll have to settle for this:
Putting the kids to bed is admittedly easier than it used to be now that our youngest can dress herself, sorta. (We still mostly believe that wearing Dora underwear on your head is super-funny) Still, if you have children or have observed “bedtime with kids” from a reasonably close distance you know that this is not for the faint of heart. (or maybe it’s just my kids that are trouble) A few nights ago I found myself bathing uncooperative girls (meaning I got wetter than they did), reading books about princesses, and singing “Goodnight Sweetheart” to a toy sheep. In and of themselves, none of these are real burdens and I’ll probably miss it all someday. Still, after 3 of the four kids had melted down and were throwing small, but deadly, objects at my head I walked away. My wife asked me where I was going and all I could spit out was,
ed the guitar and the girls (ages 4 & 6) hit anything they could find with drum sticks . . . repeatedly. Our family = not the people to put in the ads.