Picture it: Nova Scotia, 1988, two parents and three kids midway through a five-hour road trip to Cape Breton to visit the grandparents.
About halfway through this trip, we'd pass a go-kart track by the highway. Without fail, my siblings and I would commence with hysterics to get my parents to stop.
Come on, what's half an hour and twenty bucks if it means GO-KARTS? Totally awesome. I could not understand why my parents didn't see the awesomeness.
I could hear the groan in my dad's voice. Most times we had to accept that it was not in the cards, but every once in a while, they would stop and treat us to our go-kart fix.
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| That's me on the left. |
Don't get me wrong; my parents enjoyed sharing fun experiences with us. But sometimes we had our own idea of what would be fun and when. "What" was often a ripoff, and "When" was usually the most inconvenient time. Yes! Water slide park half an hour before supper! (Hmm, no wonder there's so much controversy about advertising to kids)
So, as I've written about before, it's Payback Time.
As a parent, I'm already seeing how you can't put much past my kid. He officially notices now if we're having takeout pizza while he's eating leftover stir-fry like a sucker. I also have to discretely place food items in the shopping cart so he doesn't notice until we get home.
It's only a matter of time before we'll have to take alternate routes home during 'fair' season, or distract by pointing out a nonexistent deer... if only to limit the amount of things to have to say 'no' to. You know, unless we planned to take him anyway.
Happy Father's Day to my dad, my kid's dad, and all the great dads out there who humour their kids just often enough to make badgering worthwhile.
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