Yesterday was Houston and my date!
Yesterday after my ZUMBA! class, Houston and i discussed where we'd want to go for our date. He said "The Children's Museum", but it was going to be closed by the time we got there. So he thought and thought, and then: "Craig's Cruisers!" So there we went.We got to ride the go karts twice, because the first time, some rowdy kids were crashing the whole time and they had to shut the race down. Houston and i and another dad-son team were allowed to go again for free because we'd been so careful to follow the rules.
The other activity Houston wanted to do was the high ropes course. He leaped and frolicked like a mountain goat high on coffee beans. Then, for much too long, he played the games which give tickets. When i was a kid, i never -- NEVER -- played those ticket games. I never even wanted to. I kind of thought everybody who did play them was ... stupid. Probably it was my parents who showed me the mathematical absurdity of the whole system, but i don't remember any conversation of that sort, so maybe i figured it out on my own.
But seriously, why would i blow ten bucks on games to win tickets which can get me three bucks worth of crappy plastic already-broken junk? But... Houston wanted to play. The ticket games can be fun, and when you see people sitting in front of machines with yards of tickets spewing from the front, it does make you want to start pumping the money into them. Kind of.
At the same time... the games i did want to play were racing games or shooting games. Houston gets his fill of racing games for free, and they look much much better than the ones at the arcade. So maybe i'll forgive him his ticket-lust.
After the money on our card ran out, we went to Steak-N-Shake. Retro fast food, and not cool-retro, just retro. Houston and i sat there for about an hour, and talked. Can birds fly with just one wing? Why not? What would you do if an airplane you were on landed in the Hudson River? And Houston says some silly things. Often they're just silly, but sometimes, they're silly-clever, and i love that. A lot.
When the date was over, i asked Houston what his favorite thing was, and he reported that the go-karts were his favorite thing. When i said that sitting talking to him was my favorite thing, he said "Really???" and screwed up his face. Affirmative, said i, and he spent a second or two being pensive. I hope he was processing in his little brain that i LOVE him, and talking with him is one of the coolest things in the world.