I hate it.
Okay, hate is too strong a word for the feeling I describe when I have to go to the Kastle. Were I a child (or were I to actively embrace my inner child), I’d absolutely love it. But they designed this sucker to have “hidden passages” and stairways into the bowels of the wooden towers that are so designed that only a three-year old can comfortably squeeze in them. I am not three. Heck, I’m not even thirty anymore. So imagine my enduring joy when I’m exhorted to “Come, Papa, COME!” by a rambunctious three-year old while I’m holding a fussing four-month old who just filled his diaper and desperately wants a bottle while my eldest is squeezing and getting stuck in a maze of twisty passages, all alike (with paths leading to the north and northwest. Your lamp is getting dimmer.)
Thus sets the stage for last Saturday.
Norah, Levi and I had walked down to the Kastle – Norah on foot, Levi in the stroller – to meet my brother and nearly-two daughter Greta for a “wearing-out” session before naptime at 1 p.m. This seemed like a good idea at the time; I’ve discovered the best way to ensure a good nap is to vigorously expend energy just before naptime. (Works for the kids, too.) Plus, without the addition of another adult there, the probability that Norah will get stuck on the top of the slide while I’m giving Levi a bottle invariably approaches 1.
It was a good day. Hot, but breezy. Lots of shade. Greta and Norah played well together, Levi was more or less happy. Then Norah started to wander towards the Big Orange Slide. The BOS is one of those ginormous twisty slides that draw toddlers like nerds to Comic-Con, but that always, ALWAYS ends up with said toddler stuck at the top of the slide, too scared to go down either way, yelling PAAAAPAAAAAAAA! PAAAAAAAPAAAAAAAAAAA! So I did my best to divert her to something else, steering her towards the empty pavillion between the BOS and the Kastle. Besides, there were at the time a group of oversized, obviously steroid-enhanced seventh graders doing their best to shimmy up the pole supports and scaring the wee ones.
The Pavillion has a couple of poles with chain dividers in front of it, and while my brother and I discussed fantasy football topics of great importance, Norah and Greta started to swing the chains. Then Norah decided to swing ON the chains. On her tummy. Forgetting, as preschoolers are so wont to do, Newton’s First Law of Motion.
Smack. Faceplant. On concrete.
To this day, I’m not entirely sure how Levi ended up in my brother’s hands. Ryan claims that I chucked him over ten feet where he caught him, David-Tyree style, over his left shoulder. (I disagree – there’s no way I would’ve hit him anywhere but right in the numbers.) I rushed over to a blood-and-snot-covered screaming visiage who was obviously in a great deal of pain. My first thought was Oh shit, it’s broken.
My wife had warned me about walking that far with two kids, but I figured what’s the worst that could happen? Well, my pre-schooler diving over a rope chain and making a dent in the concrete with her face would rank right up there. But I didn’t exactly comprehend the mechanics of WHY this was such a bad idea, until we went home. Ever tried to carry a sobbing preschooler five blocks in one arm while pushing a stroller with the other arm? Next to a busy street? Bless him, Levi conked out in the stroller on the way home, else I would have likely committed hara-kiri around Third Street.
It took 20 minutes after we got home, a special visit from Pink Pig, a purple band-aid on her nose, and a Thomas video to get her calmed down enough for me to take a good look at her schnozz. Bruised, scraped up pretty good. But probably not broken. I doped her up good with Tylenol and ibuprofen and managed to get her down for a nap relatively quickly. We went to church that evening with her in a party dress and matching purple band-aid, and by the end of that trip she was more or less back to normal, though when I’d ask her about how she’s feeling she’d touch her nose and say “Still hurts, Papa.”
By the next day she was fine, though prone to picking the scabs around her nostrils such that her nose looks like she just went through a heroin binge with Nicole Ritchie. But otherwise, her schnozz looks fine.
She hasn’t asked to go back to the Kastle since.
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