I've Seen Enough

The birthday is over. It was a mediocre event made significantly better by some good friends who I happen to work with. Cake, italian food, and a group of 5 year olds singing Happy Birthday made up for everything else.

Yesterday marked the annual field trip to the Columbus Zoo, or as I like to call it "Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?" Trip. The WTTWAGI Trip always seems exciting in the days leading up to the event.

Baby Elephants!

Gorillas!

Manatees!

In reality it is a pointless excursion that involves a very cranky child locked into a stroller, too short to see over the rail at the bears. It also involves going into a food court that apparently feeds the entire population of Franklin County, fighting for a dirty table, standing in line for 58 minutes to get a cold slice of pizza.

And you know what else? The train ride is ALWAYS broke. Never mind the fact that while you were walking up the damn hill to get to the train station you see it running. With people on it. By the time you get to the depot to buy tickets, it is no longer in service. So then, you have to walk down the damn hill, with the kid in the stroller who does not understand why they can't ride the train. The kid who is hot, tired, hungry, and too short to see over the railing.

So, you say, lets stop at the pretzel stand. We will get a pretzel and an ICEE and that will make up for the lack of a functioning train ride through the zoo. So, you stand in line, and of course you are behind "those people". The ones who are only capable of communicating with their children by SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS so loud that the meerkats on the other side of the zoo twist their heads in confusion. By the way, they are out of pretzels.

By this time, the children in strollers are typically in a dark, quiet room, laying on a cot, listening to lullabies for a nice two hour nap. By this time, they don't care about the Baby Elephant, or the train. Their kind parents who have naively volunteered to chaperone a field trip are wondering what the hell they were thinking and how soon can they leave without looking bad.

So, you decide that you have had all the fun you can possibly stand in one day and you make your way to the exit. You wonder how come the car seems SO far away. You barely have time to unstrap the kid from the stroller and strap them into their car seats before they are snoring.

In the midst of it all, you thank the great Flying Spaghetti Monster that no one was lost or stolen, that there is indeed a Starbucks with a drive thru on the way home, and that you didn't get arrested while taking a picture of a misspelled word on the back of a bathroom stall.

All in all a great day.