friday night marty took alex and bella to an amen concert. amen is the acapella group our friend e-love operates. for not entirely clear reasons, anthony did not want to go this year so i agreed to hang back with him. just after the concert-crew left, i told anfer to saddle up and we were going on an adventure. wanting to assess if this second option held appeal to him he asked what we were doing. i told him it was a surprise. anthony is not a great fan of surprises and told me as much. i held my ground.

my palm V informed me that the bubble soccer courts were open tonight. i learned about bubble soccer some months back and after laughing till injury while watching their explanatory videos i entered the tournament dates into my palm. as i said that was many months ago and i recalled seeing it in my calendar and here i was with a young boy (who i thought would find bubble-soccer high-sterical) and some time on our hands. i planned to follow that up with a dam burger (the most amazing burger-fry combo in all of stl) which happened to be magically near the bubble soccer courts. and then we would swing by ted drewes which, once addicted, can always be rationalized as being close-by.

bubble soccer did not dissapoint and i found myself laughing till injury, again, while i watched a set of high school kids, male and female, sending each other awkwardly ricocheting off the walls, floors and other players. curiously, anthony found the sport "harsh", a description he repeated after every collision. his side of the dialogue included, most exclusively, the following lines repeated.

that was harsh dad.
why is this game so harsh?
why do you want me to see this kind of harshness dad?
do you want me to grow up to be this harsh?
that boy is the most harsh.
do these boys know they are harsh?

to picture the full dialogue you need to imagine the person he's talking to as resembling bobby deniro's character in cape fear cackling in the movie theater. and i'm not even a slap-stick comedy kinda guy but i found this inflated-gladiator warfare wickedly funny.

anthony's dislike turned into a full-on snit so i said we'd go. as we walked out his lecture about my choice continued. by the time i was pulling out of the rec center's lot i had cancelled our next two stops and was headed home (even though this injured me more that it did him but a good percentage of parenting needs to go that way).

as i closed in on our house i realized it was 8pm and i hadn't eaten since lunch. so i pulled up in front of our cheap chinese spot, told anthony i'd be right back (he was reading in the back seat). i ran in ordered my usual and then stepped back outside to wait for it to be ready. as i stood on the sidewalk i watched the people passing by got lost in my thoughts of work and the weekend. i was pulled out of my stupor by a loud-talking man. he appeared to be a college-student and was leaning into a police car. i heard him say to the officer, "maam. someone left that little boy alone in the car. they pulled up and ran into one of the stores here."

honestly, the first thougth through my head was "now what douchebag went and did that?" then the guy pointed at my car. my eyes went from my car, to his outstretched arm, to the police officer swiveling in her seat to get a better look, to my car, to the man's pointing finger to the officer to the pointing finger before my mind shook me from my daze enough to hear the words, "they're talking about you idiot".

i raised my own hand and said "excuse me sir. that is my car and i'm right here." he ignored me. i thought he didn't hear me so i repeated myself. this time i knew he heard me but still ignored me so he was fully caught up in some bizarre passive-aggressive move (like being left in the car alone too often as a child himself) so i just walked up to the policemen's window, leaned in and explained that the car and child were mine and i was standing there waiting for a food order. she nodded, smiled and drove on. i stood up and looked at the whistle-blower who was walking off self-importantly. my mind flashed an image of him wearing a huge clear bubble, then a bubble-wrapped me careening into him at full-speed sending him into a rolling ricochet off the plate-glass window of the storefront he passed. this mental movie may not have made me cackle, but it did make me smile.