I'm quite self-absorbed these days. I walked up on a conversation with some friends and I realized they weren't talking about me, but a problem that one of them was having and I thought, I didn't know! I'm hoping to stop feeling this way soon. But I'm not holding my breath. I'm supposed to hear from the doctor today, but rather than wait on pins and needles, I'm distracting myself. And, as it turns out, no news is not necessarily good news.
And I wait.
And while we all wait for me, I'll tell you a story that happened to a friend of mine. I would like it noted somewhere in a Big Book that I'm now going to blog about someone other than myself and a problem that is not my own.
My friend has a child that just started Kindergarten. She wanted to get her kid and other kids in that class together for a play-date at a playground. Someone beat her to the punch and started the play-date before she could get around to doing it. It's not that my friend was slow, but she was concerned about not stepping on anyone's toes and moving outside protocol. She is very thoughtful that way. The person who started the play-date just went ahead and did it.
This Other Person set up the play-date at a playground convenient to her. My friend, however would have chosen a different place for the kids to go and she had some Very Legitimate Reasons. The first Reason is that the kids need to go to afternoon Kindergarten after the play-date and it's hard to get the kids neat and tidy for school after they've been playing in sand. Fortunately, there are other playgrounds around that don't have sand and have been re-finished to nearly-new and would make a better choice of locale. The second Reason is a bathroom.
The Other Person, however, turned out to be Blind. Probably not completely blind, but visually impaired enough to not be able to drive and the location the she chose would enable her to walk. Being politically correct and all, my friend went along with the choice of playgrounds even though there is sand because, of course, how can you go against a blind person? Well, I am sorry to say that this is another case of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
In order to let the Other Person have her way, my friend packed up two kids and their gear and toted them to this playground. There was no parking anywhere close because of street cleaning, so she lugged the kids and stuff several blocks. Upon arrival, her child had to go to the bathroom (because they do that) and the bathrooms at this playground were locked. She made her kid go in the bushes and it caused a - shall we say - mishap on the clothes. This caused a lot of tears and unhappiness in the child and how can you blame the kid? Who wants the wet themselves by the time they get into Kindergarten? The troop had to leave the playground before the play-date even began and lug all the stuff several blocks back to the car.
What is my friend to do? She can't take a stand against a Blind Lady. That's got to be stepping over some line and one or the other is going to have people whispering behind her back for years to come. But should she have to go through major inconveniences to participate? If she doesn't participate will her child be socially stunted for years to come? Perhaps my friend should become a little more self-absorbed like me so that she doesn't go out of her way again, only to become completely put out.
Personally, people who are visually impaired get a lot of breaks. Those of us who can't hear for crap never get any sympathy so I'm a bit jealous. I think tough patooties to the Blind Lady and move the playground to a better location. My oldest daughter agrees with me. My youngest daughter thinks the same thing. Maybe each person that goes can take turns carting the Blind Lady to the better location.
Are we going to talk about me again now?
3 comments:
Play-Dates?!? There's no play-dates in Baseball! From the landing of the Pilgrims and for 220years after we became a nation play-dates was not in our lexicon. When did this become the norm? (I knew it was bound to happen when the Hippies finally got in charge - they're what in their 60's now.) Not a big fan of planned/forced playing. I remember when I was a kid I wanted to get away from my parents, not play with them sitting nearby. If just going out the door and playing was good enough for every other generation of Americans, it should be good enough for this generation. We're raising a bunch of namby-pamby's who are taught to fear their own shadow. (Yeah, I understand abductions happen, but they've always happened, it's just that in the past we didn't hear about them because media coverage tended to be local as opposed to national. And with the millions of kids in the USA your kid has a better chance of winning the lottery than being abducted.) Whatever happened to just going over to someone's house and playing on the swing set, or playing red light, green light 1, 2, 3, or god forbid playing Army - or is that too violent for a playdate. Ever since I saw that South Park episode where Cartman was having a backyard tea party with his stuffed animals and asking Polly Prissypants if she wanted more tea, I knew we as a nation were doomed.
Actually, Joe (I know it's you!) the play dates are how the women of the new world order are collecting their power and building community to run things when your rocking chair is creaking.
Busted!
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