When it rains in L.A., you might as well assume that the world is coming to an end. I spent most of my life in Florida, the land of the afternoon thunderstorm and home to monsoon like rains that could easily wash Los Angeles into Davey Jones' locker. But, because rain in L.A. is such a rare occasion, the slightest sprinkle not only generates news reports for days before and after (the question normally posed to the random public is some variation of “What are you planning to do/ What did you do during all of the unimaginably terrible weather”...it's like the L.A. version of interviewing trailer park dwellers after a tornado) but it sends Angelinos everywhere into a frantic survival mode. I'll refrain from detailing how after such inclement weather the freeways are always littered with the hulking remains of cars whose drivers haven't the comprehension of how to navigate wet streets, mainly because they have no idea where the switch that operates the windshield wipers is located and their misguided logic dictates that the best way to get through the rain is to drive faster.
So, when it rains, mommies and daddies have to have a place to take their children to play, since children, especially toddlers, can develop cabin fever and transform into raging maniacs of destruction in the blink of an eye if their attention is not held or they are unable to expend the apparently limitless superhuman energy that they possess. The answer to this, of course, is the indoor play place. This is not the type of play area you find in a questionable fast food restaurant where unfortunate, sweaty people dressed as some overstuffed mascot try to coerce you into eating coronary inducing synthetic food, but a large and elaborate indoor area with various structures, pits, swings and slides on which children can potentially cause grievous bodily injury to themselves or those around them. This was our Day-After-Thanksgiving adventure, our own personal Black Friday. This particular play place was crafted by an ingenious sadist (a Japanese business man, who according to my wife, “rocks a Kung-Fu mullet”) who walks around in workout clothes apparently making sure that the play structures are still standing and that no children have been maimed on his watch. This place offers an interesting opportunity for adults as well, as there is a café inside where mommies and daddies can enjoy lunch while they watch from a safe distance as children go careening about.
As my daughter is two, she thinks she is capable of anything, especially if there are other children doing it, regardless of how big they are. She was quickly shown otherwise by the “Swinging Palm Trees of Death” as I like to call them. The device in question is a large rotating set of swings that spin around a central post and the whole thing is cleverly disguised as a giant palm tree with branches that hang to the ground. Instead of seats, however, the end of the swing arm is what looks like a medicine ball that the children sit on whilst holding on for dear life. Once it gets going, it resembles a beach themed G-Force simulator like one would see in an old NASA training video. My daughter thought it would be great fun to try to grab onto the ball as it was spinning, and she held on just long enough to build up the momentum required to fling her toward the nearest wall, where she smacked into it Wile E. Coyote style.
After a brief fit of screaming, she moved to the ball pit. This ball pit is only accessible by climbing a steep ramp, then crawling through hamster-like tunnels on the second level and then by descending several platforms down to where the pit awaits. Of course, everything on that particular structure is toddler sized, except for the distance between the platforms one must navigate to get to the ball pit. Two year olds are adept enough to climbs down the platforms, but they aren’t quite tall enough or strong enough to pull themselves back up when either they or their parents want them out. Since the ball pit is surrounded by mesh and separated from the rest of the play area, the only way in or out is to traverse the aforementioned labyrinth. Slightly overweight and out of shape fathers are not best suited for this particular environment. As two year olds are want to do, they may spend anywhere from five seconds to ten minutes in the ball pit before trying to fruitlessly climb out, which then results in screaming for mamma or dada who must come to the rescue by climbing up the ramp, squeezing through the baby tunnels, then contorting themselves so they can lower themselves down, level by level until they reach the ball pit of doom, there I would then pick up my screaming child who would absolutely refuse to walk and carry her back up the ridiculously narrow passage of levels, through the tunnel of despair until we reached the opening where the ramp leads back down to main floor. This junction of tunnel and ramp is often where my screaming daughter would decide to break free and run down the tunnel to the other end where a giant slide would offer her an escape route back to the carnage of the play floor. Then I, shaking my head, would have to continue to crawl on my hands and knees toward the ramp opening before I could stand up and walk upright again and then down the ramp where I would pass my daughter as she was careening back up the ramp to make her way back to the ball pit where the process would start all over again within just a few minutes.
Three hours later when my wife and I had decided we had taken enough abuse, it was time to go. My daughter, of course was in the ball pit again and I thought, foolishly, that I could ask her to come out since it was time to go home. A few moms had taken up residence in the ball pit as they apparently got tired of making the trek and were sitting on the ledges, so my daughter thought that since they must live in the ball pit, she could ask them if it was ok to stay and that would overrule my decision. They were kind enough to look at me and chuckle as I made my way back to the pit to fetch my daughter who was now in full melt down mode as making her leave the pit was tantamount to a death sentence in her mind. My wife collected our things and met me at the base of the ramp (taking pictures, of course) as I hauled my screaming daughter out of that infernal maze of insanity and took her home for her nap.
It was a busy Thanksgiving week, indeed.
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