Country Mouse...City Mouse

She Actually Loves This


One of our granddaughter's favorite activities (next to eating blueberries) is swinging at the park. She endures the eight-block walk-festooned this time with lightning bugs on the way home-just to be able to away gently for as long as her parents or grandparents are willing to push her. I figured this would be a great family outing on a Saturday night in Chicago...uh, mostly.
It would seem that this particular park plays host to literally thousands of people, and most of them appeared to be there when we arrived, and all the swings were full! Fortunately, before our little girl got wind of that situation, a child slipped out, and the swing was ours. In spite of the incredible din caused by, literally, hundreds of little kids in a small area, our outing was preliminarily a success...until the fight started.
Among the hundreds of parents in attendance, two women began an argument that escalated quickly into a potential fistfight. These were large women, and it took at least five people to keep them separated as they dropped "M-F" bombs and personal invectives by the score...seriously, it was a movie scene from Andy Warhol. While they were screaming and cursing one another about doing" this and that to my kids" and "you don't tell me..." I noticed that nobody was watching her kids! As the fight swirled ever closer to our little darling on the swing, the four of us surrounded her for protection. One of the mothers began to swing her fists around her head threatening all sorts of physical violence (to which I almost laughed because a jab to the jaw would have felled her since she had her arms 'way over her head). Any REAL fighter would have decked her in the first 20 seconds, but I guess it was all about posturing since both were still there, sitting almost peacefully with only a few "M-F" bombs being dropped (now in the presence of their children they were trying so hard to protect).
It was a totally surrealistic scene, and I was glad to vamoose with the papoose shortly thereafter.
Living in a small town or small city has its advantages. So what if we can't get to SuperDawgs every week? We can get a swing at the aprk here anytime we want, and fights are rare.