I Was Thinking It
We went down to Red Rock State Park today. When I say “we” I mean me, the wife, kids, my brother, his wife and kids and one extra just for luck. That makes eight kids, four adults in case you’re counting. First thing, when my nephew gets in the water he makes his way over to the “sand bar” which is more like a mud bar in the middle of the “river”. Oak Creek is a little low due to a multi-year drought and is much more of a creek than a river, although where we managed to get into the water was around six feet deep in a couple of spots.
Back to the nephew – my brother’s step son. As soon as he gets over to the mud bar he starts picking it up and throwing it at the other kids. I figure that he’s going to get one in the eye before long and yell at him to stop throwing the mud. The other kids get closer to him and he continues throwing mud. Well, since I’m so “uptight” my brother my wife tells me to lighten up on the kid; my brother tells me that I’m worse than the kids. I decide that I’m going to let him do his thing. The little snot is always throwing things and I seem to be the only one that cares – the last time we had gone camping and it was rocks and sticks(logs actually) being thrown into the water. Now, it might seem like I’m trying to justify my behavior. Think that if you want. I keep being told, “he’s/they is/aren’t bothering anyone, stop yelling at him/them.” The thing is, someone eventually enters the line of fire and “not bothering anyone” turns into spoiled ignorance1 of others’ right to enjoy themselves as my nephew (usually joined by my daughter and step-son) keeps throwing crap no matter who just walked or swam into the hot zone. I told my wife that I would stop saying anything to the kids – especially if that’s the way she wanted it.
As it turns out the day was pretty nice. The water was cool, but not cold, and we used the rope swing to jump off a pretty good size rock on the other side of the creek. Luckily there was plenty of mud at the bottom of the four foot deep jumping hole and we didn’t jump too far down so no one got hurt. I even jumped a few times.
Towards the end of the day the kids were all throwing mud even down to the four year old. My brother got into the act throwing some mud at the kids as well. He wasn’t in the middle of it for too long getting out to finish off the big sandwich he bought at Safeway. Then my wife got into a mud throwing fight with the kids. She was laughing and throwing mud at them, they were laughing and throwing it back at her. I think each one of the kids got some mud in their eyes.
And then it happened. My wife told the kids to stop. She was apparently getting tired of the mud throwing and it was getting close to her face. Just as I figured, unless nipped in the bud throwing stuff doesn’t just stop. By now you can probably guess that one final mud wad was slung getting in her hair, her ear and somewhere close to the eyes. That ended the day. Our kids were told to get out of the water. I knew it would happen – but I’m just too uptight. I chose not to say, “I told you so,” since it was my wife that got smacked with the mud, but don’t think I wasn’t thinking it…
- My biggest pet peeve is people ignorant of anything outside of themselves. Inconsiderate pukes…
