You'll Look Twice at That Dropped Potato Chip

The county built a beautiful new park nearby and my kids and I had been itching to go. However, I don't function in heat, (read: I turn into a melting grouch who whines for iced coffee and a cabana boy to fan me in the shade), so we'd been putting it off for awhile. But a streak of 70 degree days had us scrambling to meet a friend and her two kids for a playdate in the sun.

The kids had a ball running around and trying out the new equipment. They only came to ask for food about 11 times instead of 235. An aside... what is it about going places that makes kids "hungry?" You know they're not hungry. You know this because they ate a full sandwich, yogurt, a pound and a half of fruit, and 37 pretzels before they left the house.

Around the 11th ask, it actually was lunch time, so we staked out a shady area on the turf, not far from the base of one of the slides. The kids happily munched away while we moms chatted.

A few minutes into lunch, inevitably, the newly potty-trained Sayer abruptly stood up and announced, "Mama! I have to pee!" I turned away for a second to put my sandwich down and said, "K, bud, let's go to the--"

I turned back around in time to see that my dear, sweet son had dropped his drawers right where he was standing and was happily creating a nice puddle of pee at the base of the slide. Horrified, I turned towards my friend whose eyes got wide. The two of us started shaking with laughter as we stared at S who was completely obvlivious. 

And of course, this was the longest pee of his life. Or maybe it just felt that way.

Cheeks burning and tears of laughter rolling down my face, I couldn't even look up to see if anyone else was watching. S finished his business, yanked up his pants, asked for "sanny-tize" and sat down expectantly.

I hurridly grabbed two half empty bottles of water from the stroller and started splashing them on the wet spot on the astroturf. This did not help the moisture problem. I now had the beginnings of a bigger puddle, this one of watered down pee.

Of course, I looked up to see a few moms who were staring at me funny, probably wondering why a sane looking woman was dumping bottles of water onto the ground at the very bottom of the slide. I caught the eye of one woman and quickly stepped in front of the emptying bottle to hide it from view and then waved.

She just stared. Which made sense because not only was I still obviously dumping water, but now that the bottle was behind me, it looked as if I was the one peeing all over the place.

The bottles emptied and I decided that nothing more could be done.

But when my daughter dropped a piece of apple onto the turf and made a motion to pick it up and eat it anyway, I may have ninja chopped it out of her hand.

Because REALLY, who KNOWS what people do on that ground?! Sheesh.