4/8/2008 Welcome Spring Thug Life

Man! Yesterday was the most beautiful day!
I pulled the jogging stroller from under the house, knocked off a black widow, (for real) and took Fox to his favorite park.
Usually Adrianne and Danny walk with us, but since she gave birth three days ago I let her off the hook.




The Island Home Community park is the best because it is
A. On the banks of the Tennessee River
B. Across the river from a turn of the century brick making factory which looks really neato
3. Just downriver from a little airport so you can see planes landing- They fly REALLY low over the park so it totally blows a toddler’s mind
D. About a mile from my house so I can walk there
5. It is the beginning of a green way path which goes to the Ijams nature center park, the Meades Quarry park, and all the way to the forks of the Holston River and the French Broad, which then becomes the Tennessee
6. The people there are younger family-types with kids who aren’t interested in hustling drugs or gang hijinks..

In my book the park is a 9 out of 10. There is another park near my house called the Mary James Community park that used to be really nice, but has lately become riddled with tween-aged thugs in training.
Fox and I went there once instead of the Island Home park because the playground is superior. There were tons of babies and children there, but no adults, THEN I realized that the babymommas were the children! There were toddlers wandering around while their 15 year old mothers were smoking cigarettes and making out with 19 year old gang-losers. Some of the "older" mothers had assigned their "older" children with the duty of mothering their babies and toddlers. What that translates to is a 6 year old who is not quite 4 feet tall carrying a 20 pound 10 month old around, miraculously hoisting the infant onto the playground equipment while attempting to multi-task their childhood. It was such a downer we haven’t been back. Oh, It just occurred to me that I have already harped about this matter in my blog. Sorry for being redundant. The bottom line is this: even with a few dead bodies washing on the river bank every now and again, the Island Home park is a far better place to spend time than the Mary James/ Southhaven park.

Anyway; here is a video of Fox confusing a 10 year old stranger for "Daddy", and sprinting towards him as fast as he could, screaming ’Daddy".



The boy was at the park playing baseball with his Dad, and after Fox ran up to them they let him play with the baseball and hold the bat. The Dad asked me how old Fox was and I told him he wasn’t quite two, and he said "it’s been a while and I forget what toddlers are like". His son said, "Yeah- it’s been 8 years, right Dad?" Then the boy told me that he had been playing baseball for three years, and tee-ball for two. He then told me that being a catcher in tee ball was the most "boringest and expensive position to play" and then, addressing Fox he said "when you play tee ball you should pitch or play third base, you get to do stuff and you don’t have to buy all the equipment". I thought it was sweet to see a 10 year old, concerned about family finances, reflecting on his early years, and then relating them to Fox, who didn’t understand a single word of it.
If Fox had run screaming at one of the tweens at the Mary James park they would have probably beat him till he cried, then made him steal them chocolate milk from the Handy Dandy Market next door as initiation into their shitty gang. Either that or the 10 year old "thug" would have confused Fox for his own child and yelled at him to "get his ass back on that swing or he would make him sorry", or something of that sentiment.