A dislocated ride and Homemade fries

 Twenty minutes into the Water Park, my husband dislocated his shoulder.

Rewind. Charlie’s swim lesson adventures from her blog Hotly Spiced made me revisit an incident that happened when my younger son was about 3 years old. He was terrified of water bodies. Though he loved spending hours in the bath tub, he would not even dip his toes in a pool. He would not go within 6 feet of a pool. Or sea. Or water-park pools for that matter.

My older son on the other hand adored water-parks and anything with water in it. We had been to water-parks earlier, but I guess my younger tot was too little to make his opinion known. We had figured out he didn’t like water bodies, but didn’t know it bordered on paranoia.

One batch fried soft

On a hot summer day that year, we decided to go to a water-park in Cape Cod. The moment our tickets were done and we had changed, my older son took off, and I followed him, leaving hubs and the tot behind at the kiddie pool area. 10 minutes later I met my husband near the kiddie water pool. He was trying to coax and cajole our very militant little kid to get into various kiddie play areas that punctuated the massive water park. Our tot would have none of it.

Finally hubs decided to take him onto the kiddie slide that had about an inch wide water stream flowing down it. Our kiddo loved slides, so I guess hubs figured our tottie would be OK with it. Then it happened.

As hubs tried to maneuver himself down the slide with out tottie on lap, his shoulder got stuck on the wall of the stone slide. Pop!

I know, it sounds painful. It was. The next few minutes were blurred. As I hunted down my older kid in the busy park while trying to keep a second squirming one still, I struggled to contain my frayed nerves and not go into a panic attack. The funny thing was, when my husband plopped in and sat immobilized in that 6 inches deep water pool, my son got up from his lap, and WALKED across that entire pool to reach me. As the ambulance took hubs away, I took stock of my situation. I couldn’t stay inside the park as my older was too young to be allowed to play by himself, while my tot obviously would not allow me to go into the water. So I checkout out of the park with a rain check. While emptying the locker on my way out, I realized that in the haze of pain, hubs had taken both the phones from there. I had my money bag, but I had changed purse and hadn’t transferred any of the Debit/Credit cards. All I had was a total of $20.00 in cash.

Now I was out of the park, in an unknown city, with two very young kids, with no phone, little money, and could not drive. Yup. I didn’t have a license, and I did not know how to drive.

I had just started taking lessons, and I was a pathetic slow learner ( I could never keep the car inside of a lane). That meant our car was pretty much useless to me. I could have taken a taxi, but to where? The ambulance came and took hubs while I was trying to get my 5-year-old off a big Water slide line. I had no clue where the hospital was. The park people couldn’t help either as most were from outside of that city. I could hardly get into a taxi with no money and go on a hospital hunt ride. Maybe the taxi would have taken me there, but how would I pay him?

Plus no phone meant once I was away from the park, hubs would have no way to contact me. So I trekked the kids down to a Burger king nearby, fed them well, picked up some drinks and fries, and trudged back to the Water Park gate. There, we sat on the dusty ground, toasting in the sun, snacking on oily comforting fries and soda, for next 5 hours, waiting for hubs to call the park. ( I knew he would do that, so I had requested the park officials to pass the message onto me.)

He did, around 5 pm in the evening. We jumped into a taxi and were with him in minutes. He was a bit drowsy from the anesthesia, in a shoulder cast, but strong pain killers meant he was doing better. He even drove us back home, even though a couple of friends were on their way to us (I had called them from borrowed cell phones). Stubborn man, my hubs. Just like my little kid.

I also remember something special about that afternoon. As we sat there, outside, on a towel and in the heat, my kids were angels. Not once did they cry, or complain. I had nothing on me to entertain them with, (I wasn’t expecting a Plan B) but they did all right. Including my tot. My 5 yr old, who loved Water-park so much, had no issues sitting and playing outside in the dirt, even when he could see hordes of children having fun inside.

And in that five hours I made two promises to myself:

a) I was going to enroll my stubborn tot into a pre-school that gave swim lessons as a part of their curriculum.

b) I would get my license as soon as I could schedule a driving test.

I did both within next two months.

Stress situations often call for comfort food, and we had some at Burger king that day. These homemade fries are at the top of my family’s comfort food list.

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