Yesterday was our annual trip to Fort Wayne for “Last Minute Madness”! We take a busload of teenagers, usually a carload of college aged students, and our van… full of (of course) my family! Yesterday we also took Ms. Brandy (and baby Ella… inside Ms. Brandy) along, since I still have one available seat in the van if Phil is driving the bus!
The first part of the trip involves shopping at the mall, and the second part of the trip involves lazer tag (at which point, I go back to the mall with anyone who isn’t old enough/big enough to play lazer tag).
First part of the day went well…
Except for the fact that I had the worst food at Chick-Fil-A that I have ever had, which was a huge disappointment, because I love Chick-Fil-A and have never had a bad experience there before. I am guessing it was the combination of a mall based store mixed with the busyness of December 23rd shoppers…
At any rate, I got a couple of great deals at Sears (a Christmas dress for Miah next year and footie PJs for Grace, because she has been begging for them and it’s hard to find them in her size!), and I enjoyed running around the mall, trying to figure out which stores to come back to once I’d left my 3 “big kids” with Phil at the lazer tag place!
This was the first year that Caleb was old enough to play lazer tag (although even Ian would be tall enough by their standards, but I cannot imagine him wearing the lazer tag gear)! Caleb was beyond excited about this adventure, and Seth and Grace were pretty stoked, too, because they look forward to this event for weeks… maybe months! We have a super amazing group of teens and college aged students, and my understanding is that they helped the kids a lot and didn’t get nasty if their teams got behind because of “little people” or anything like that… Seth actually even had one game in which he was the top scoring player! Exciting stuff!
Meanwhile… back at the mall…
Brandy (& Ella), Ian, Miah, and I had some fun at Build-A-Bear workshop, which is quickly becoming a tradition for my “less than lazer tag size” crew! Ian originally wanted to build an abominable snowman. I talked him out of that, so we ended up with a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer that talks… and sings… and has a nose that lights up… and roller skates… and a hat and scarf… This was expensive. Miah got a Build-A-Bunny, whom we named “Snuggle”. Snuggle has a Christmas dress and hat, bows, and shiny red shoes. This also was expensive… but not as expensive. Thankfully, since I am a dork… my coupons and gift cards cut the total by 1/3 at the checkout. That’s all you really have to know about the price, because it was still outrageous!
We hit up the taffy and fudge counter (thus making me the hero of the day when we finally did hook up with the rest of the fam. again), I bought myself a Christmas present (100% organic soap… yeah… that “L” is showing up darker and darker on my forehead every day…), and then we stopped at Dairy Queen/Orange Julius, where I has a very large three berry smoothie, Ian had a very large, “small” chocolate ice cream cone, Brandy had a small Orange Julius, Ella had vanilla ice cream, and Miah had milk… After that it was a quick spin (quite literally) on the double decker carousel, and then we were off to re-claim my oldest three…
Phil had called me a little earlier to let me know that Caleb was exhausted. Later on, Caleb told me that he had fun, but lazer tag was nothing like he thought it would be. I asked him what he thought it would be like, but he wouldn’t tell me!
When I got there, I found Phil and Grace, and Grace was crying! This was surprising to me, because if I am going to find a crying child, Grace would be my last guess… every time! As it turns out, some lady accused her of swinging her lazer gun and hitting people with it… uh… this really doesn’t sound like Grace… at all. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those people who thinks her children can do no wrong. I discipline my kids when they’re out of line. Grace is an amazing kid, but she does do things, sometimes, that are not OK. If I had gotten there and found that someone had accused her of screaming at the top of her lungs when someone shot a lazer at her and then running through the room whining and insisting that she had not been hit and someone should turn her light back on because of the unfairness in the world, I would have immediately talked to her about her attitude and proper etiquette in public places. I would have known that she had done this. But intentionally swinging a gun at people and hitting them with it? No… just not Grace…
Apparently, the lady immediately exited that round of lazer tag and came to Phil, defending herself and telling him about Grace hitting people… We found that kind of weird, since no one had accused her of anything… yet…
Phil and I talked to Grace, got her calmed down, and figured this was the end of a silly little mishap… Our best guess, at this point, is that Grace really was “swinging” her gun… in a childlike, “hey lazer tag is so much fun and I’m excited” kind of way, and maybe it accidentally bumped the woman in question. Grace insists that even this did not happen, but I am pretty sure that in the dark (mind you) it could have and Grace wouldn’t have even realized it!
At any rate, I collected Caleb (and Seth, who was wearing out, too), and we went back to the van where Brandy (& Ella), Ian, and Miah were waiting. Grace had opted to play the last game of the day (which I considered playing, myself, but didn’t really want to pay the $7.00 for just one game). We ate some taffy and fudge and waited for the day to finish up…
Well… it wasn’t 10 minutes later, and Grace comes out to the van, really crying. In a state of confusion, I ask her what happened, and she tells me she hurt her toe. Really? OK… so I tell her to hop in, and we determine that the injury is not life threatening. I pass some taffy back to her, and she exclaims, “And that’s not all… one of the people who said I was hitting people with my lazer gun came up to me and started swinging her gun at me!” Now… that makes more sense as to why my lazer tag obsessed 9 year old daughter would leave the game early! She was scared!
I found Phil immediately and asked for more details about this woman who originally accused Grace. I then told him how inappropriate it is for an adult to swing a blunt object at my child (not that he didn’t already know this) and marched my way back into the building. Phil was right behind me within a second or two. It’s really no secret that I have a hot temper if you mess with my kids, and I think he wanted to make sure I didn’t totally ruin the reputation of our church at the lazer tag place… we do go there every year, you know… J
I went in and talked with the guy at the counter who is always there. I told him what was going on, and he was very, very nice. There wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it, since the last game of the day was already in progress, but he agreed with me that it wasn’t “very cool” of this woman, and I think I made it pretty clear that I was going to approach her when she exited the game.
When the game let out, Phil tried to figure out, from our own people, what had happened to Grace, and Connor told him that the lazer tag staff guy had brought Grace out of the game when she started crying. No harm there… thank you lazer tag guy for noticing that my child was distraught and helping her to get through the dark course… Definite kudos for the people who run this place…
Phil pointed out the lady to me who had talked to him earlier. She was with another woman (maybe 17-22 years old… I’m guessing a daughter) and a little boy who was probably around 8. I went up to her and said… very nicely and calmly, “Excuse me, ma’am (she looked to be in her mid-40s, so I thought ma’am was appropriate), I think you had a confrontation with my daughter.” She then got in my face and said sort of loudly and escalating, “I did not have a confrontation with your daughter. She hit me with her gun and I told her to stop!” Now… I don’t know… maybe she didn’t understand what the word confrontation meant. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt… but that sounds like a confrontation to me. The girl next to her also got in my face and started talking about how Grace was going around swinging her gun at people and hitting them… (I did for a brief moment wonder at this point if they just didn’t understand lazer tag at all and were offended that Grace was hitting them with lazers and scoring more points than them…) I proceeded to say (still nicely, quietly, but perhaps slightly less calmly), “well… my daughter is 9 years old, and she doesn’t lie, and that’s not the story I heard.” I started to say, “She said that you accused her of hitting people with her gun and then that in this last game someone who was with you was swinging their gun at her.” At this point, the three of them started trotting for the front of the building and the door (I really think they were scared they were going to be kicked out and never allowed back in, and this is the point at which I knew I was right in believing Grace all along), and the lady starts shouting over her shoulder, “Well… I can see where she got her attitude!” I said (a little more loudly now, just so she could hear me), “That is not how you treat 9 year old little girls!” Then I said mostly to myself, and partly under my breath… “Attitude, you wanna see attitude… I’ve got attitude…”
Our amazing teenagers kinda parted the way for me, as I went after these people on the way out of the building… The scene was probably pretty funny, actually, because it had to have looked like they were running away from me… The lazer tag guy at the counter looked kind of amused…
As I got out the door, the woman was already in her car, driving away as quickly as she could. Unbelievable! Gosh, I thought to myself, “I’m glad I don’t have to work with her, because there are no conflict resolution skills there!” Plight of a business major, I guess, to have these conversations in my head…
Connor was standing on the sidewalk with a handful of our other teenagers, looking a little confused, and asked, “Was it one of our people who did this to Grace?” I laughed and said, “No… if it was one of you guys I would have just beat you!” There was a brief moment of awkward silence, and then we all burst out laughing! I am seriously a very non-violent person! In my 31 years of life, I have never been in a fist fight. I remember slapping an ex-boyfriend… once… and to this day I have no idea what he did but am relatively sure he deserved it…
However… it’s probably a good thing that I didn’t play that last round, because if I had seen a full grown adult taking a swing at my child with a lazer gun, I probably would have swung back… and ended up on the nightly news!
There are some occasions in which threatening children is appropriate…
For instance, it’s OK (if you’re the parent) to say, “If you don’t clean your room, I am going to take your DS and send it, with extra batteries, to Ethiopia, where some child will appreciate it!”
It is never OK to walk up to a child you do not know and threaten to hit them with a blunt object… just never…
Overall, I think everything turned out OK. Grace is even embarrassed, this morning, that I’m writing the story. She is decked out in her owl print footie pajamas and playing Build-A-Bear with Miah. Let me tell you, she looks like and enraged, cold blooded killer who might snap and go on a rampage, knocking people unconscious with squirt guns at any moment…
And now I have a house to clean… because there is no where for Santa to leave my coal, since I am such a ferocious, attitude filled Mommy!
Lisa
Lisa