Chris and I have a growing and fun practice with Ali and Abi. One day he takes Ali on a “Daddy-Daughter date” and that leaves me to look after Abi, who has decided that I need to take her on a date, too. The next day we exchange girls.
One day last week was my day with Abi. It was, as always, interesting to see what she decided she wanted to do on our date. She announced that she wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese, which is not much more than a casino for adolescents . . . that offers really bad pizza at terribly high prices. I chuckled and reminded her that we are in Snyder and there is not one within 100 miles. After we talked about options, she decided she wanted us to find a park with a playground. I told her that I knew just the place and drove to the nice city park/lake. She was quite impressed with the ducks and geese everywhere and said that we needed to buy a loaf of bread and feed them after we had played for a while.
As we walked thru the play area reserved for kids-under-8-years-of-age, we met a young mom with a 3-year-old daughter and a 6-month-old in a stroller. Of course, Abi had to pause and play the big-girl with them. As we moved on, we encountered a 6-year-old boy who identified himself as “Blake” . . . and was quite likely the wildest little kid I have ever encountered. He was fearless and was all over the things that were designed for climbing, which included a large tree. He jumped around a bunch and actually hit the ground quite hard several times. I asked if he was at the park alone since there were no other adults nearby. He pointed to a car down on the street and said his mom was in the car reading. After a bit we excused ourselves and headed to the car as Blake called out to me to push him up the monkey bars one more time.
We drove to the market and purchased a loaf of bread and returned to feed the critters. As we drove along, Abi reminded me of a knock-knock joke she made up last year about the ducks who live along the creek in the park in Burnet, which goes as follows:
Abi: knock-knock
Me: Who’s there?
Abi: ducks Me: ducks who?
Abi: ducks who won’t eat the bread we throw on the ground . . . followed by laughter!
As we parked alongside the lake, a large group of the ducks and geese made their way over. As we got out of the car with the loaf of bread, the critters surrounded us . . . it was obvious they played (and liked) this game often. Abi was a bit apprehensive about how aggressive a couple of the geese were and decided that she would prefer to throw crumbs out in the safety of the back-seat of the car.
Once we had fed all the birds, we left the lake area. She asked that I stop at Sonic on the way back to the apartment so she could get a cold drink, which I gladly did. As we were served our drinks, she informed me that I was a “pretty good date.” Which I accepted as high praise. Next day . . . I had a date with Ali . . .