TheMommyBlog

Friday, May 12, 2006 Our Holiday Curse, Bad Mood Dude

So after last night’s heart-stopping episode we were all looking forward to some fun and food and face-painting at the children’s school’s annual fundraising fair.

Yes, I can hear you laughing up there.

It was great through the first two cotton candies, the chicken sandwich, hamburger, hot dogs, dropped can of soda, torn bun, bumpy, lumpy, squealing roly-polies down the fifteen-foot, mega-inflatable slide. There was a little cake walking (Logan came away like a stunned Las Vegas loser—"Mom, I just used nine tickets on three turns and I didn’t win anything!"—a little jumper action, and then back to the slide.

Which collapsed. With my daughter and two other little girls on it. I looked up in slow motion as the slide lost air, as the upper landing sank into itself, as the last girl slid down and scrambled off the landing. “Is there anyone else up there?” A flash of bright pink and strawberry hair. Daphne. Crying. And sinking.

I chucked my clogs and thrust my soda can at a man standing there and clambered up the sagging platform and as I stepped onto the slide, the pull of my foot on the deflating structure increased the incline to oh, about perpendicular to the ground. Daphne was at the top and I could barely see her from her little pool of rising platform and when she saw me coming I yelled JUMP, JUMP TO ME, and she did and I caught her and then I was on the grass, holding her, legs wrapped tight around my waist, sobbing, sobbing together. Again.

The operator apologized over and over but she was just a mom volunteering and understood that all I cared about was that she was safe, and that she wasn’t too badly frightened. In fact, ten minutes later, she was lined up again, asking me for another ticket.

“Oh, I think they’ll let you on without a ticket this time.”