Pumpkin Festival Bonanza

We went to a Pumpkin Festival in a nearby town a week and a half ago, and Daniel acquired many things. At one point, he announced

"Daddy, I feel really lucky. You know why?"

"Why?"

"I've got my own bag of Skiddles... leafs [sic], and a [hand]-stamp that lasts for a long time."

At the same fair, Daniel and Ian competed in one of those evil contests of olde, where you pay money, grab an oversized mallet, hit a scale as hard as you can, and attempt to drive a metal ring up a pole to the top, to ring a bell, so that you can win a prize. Practically the very worst contest for a five-year-old - even one with Daniel's zeal and vigor. Daniel and Ian both wanted badly to participate in this challenge and try to win a prize, and I had a little huddle with them, away from the proprietors, where I said that they weren't likely to win the big prize, but - since it was an "Everybody wins [to a point]" attraction, if they were happy with the lesser prizes, they could still give it a try.

Ian tried it, failed to ring the bell, and left very happy with a bizarre, gauze-like detective's hat.

Ian wore the hat for the rest of the evening, except for one point where the boys went on a giant slide. At that point, he gave me his hat to hold, but in a typical fit of wackiness, I decided to wear it instead. On one iteration up the slide, Ian came over to me and said, with some anxiety, "Daddy - nice!"

I was pleased that he thought I looked nice in his ridiculous hat. But it turned out that I was hearing him wrong. He was protesting: "Lice!"

My son didn't want me to wear his hat, because his father might end up giving him lice.

I surmised - correctly, it turned out - that Amy had had some little talk with him about the dangers of sharing hats in public, and Ian had very logically applied the concern to his own family.

In any case, Daniel tried the ring-the-bell-with-the-mallet scam, failed, and was simply crushed that he didn't win the "winner's" prize that he had targeted, and was stuck with some inflatable hammer instead. The 13-year-old-ish boy who was in charge of the attraction - obviously the son of the operation's owner - was very compassionate, and gave Daniel many more chances to win the prize. He would say to him, "Get mad at your Dad - pretend he's never gonna let you have toys again," and to stoke the effort at manufactured boy-rage - the kind that might enable a five-year-old to hit the mallet hard enough to ring the bell - I would then chime in, "No more toys! Ever!!" But it didn't work, in spite of the many attempts. Finally, the boy in charge of the contest relented, and simply gave Daniel the prize that he wanted.

Daniel walked away very, very happy, with practically the best toy anybody could hope for - a two-foot-long, inflatable semi-automatic machine gun, made in China, emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes of the world's largest weapons exporter. Rather a perfect metaphor for the "sole superpower's" current contribution to the world, and a wonderful symbol of the sophisticated, freedom-loving "patriotism" of the current age.

But we were not finished with guns.

Ian got a dog sock-puppet, after much lobbying, so I had to let Daniel get something else, and he ended up with a toy pistol, with multi-colored casing around the mouth of the gun which, every time you pull the trigger, issues the sound of futuristic semiautomatic gunfire - the kind you might enjoy in a low-budget science fiction movie from the 1970's or 80's, and flashes light through the colorful casing, resulting in a brilliant rainbow of mass-destruction.

Daniel played with this gun for the rest of the day, and got up early on Sunday morning to play with it some more. In spite of all the getting-ready-for-Church that we had to do, I humored him, and went out into the yard while the rest of the house slept. Outside, we had a fierce gun-fight, including an occasional chase, which initially consisted of me pointing the stick assigned to me at him, and running around like an imbecile, hiding and shooting, while Daniel would simply stand in the center of the front yard, smiling coolly, "aiming" straight, without shifting, and firing one round after another of Star Wars ordnance into me.

The gun went to church with us, even though I wouldn't let him brandish it, even outside, until most people had gone home.

Later that day, Daniel announced, "Daddy, I think I'm gonna make this my favorite toy."

(October 27, 2011)