Fun Fair

I just love this picture. I took it the evening we took three year old Caitlin to the Regina Fall Fun Fest. It rained all day and she was mad because we promised we would take her. The rain stopped and we packed up infant Walker and finally went. Caitlin was scared of the big ride, bigger than the little cars that go in a circle, with big airplanes and propellers that went around with the wind.

Thirteen years and three months later, I picked Caitlin up at the Fareway after her second night as a checkout person. She was talking a mile a minute. She was supposed to have Casey watching her while she worked since it was her second day. Casey went back for a little while for some reason and while she was gone a girl came up and asked to buy cigarettes.

Someone said "Be sure and card her!" Caitlin asked for an i.d. The girl smiled and handed over her driver's license. Caitlin did the math.

"I'm sorry, I can't sell you these," Caitlin told her, and put the cigarettes back. The girl smiled and left.

Pretty soon a man came in and approached Caitlin. He asked if she had just refused to sell cigarettes to a girl, and Caitlin replied that she had. The man told her that she was making his job easier and introduced himself as part of a security operation "blah, blah, blah," Caitlin said. All she knew was that on her second day she got "stung" and that she had just avoided a $500.00 fine for selling cigarettes to minors. She confided that it was a good thing Megan told her to card the girl, because there's a lot to think about when you're learning to check out. I personally still don't know how to check out.

There are a bunch of sappy songs about daughters growing up and how fast it goes. One minute you're at the Fun Fest and the next she's necking on your sofa with a boy from Mt. Vernon. Paul Cunliffe, former bandmate has a very classy daughter who is now in her late 20's, I think. When Caitlin was little he told me:

"You never know when that last push on the swing is going to come."

Schwann's Update: There is an apartment complex on the campus of the agency where I work, for families of recovering addicts and chemical dependent people. I know I have reported on this blog about the Schwann's conspiracy, involving suburban housewives and serial cannabalism. Well, I saw a Schwann's truck pulling into the complex for formerly chemically dependent people! Now I am concerned that Schwann's is brancing out into other socioeconomic classes, the underpriveleged, and the non-suburban. I have heard that Schwann's is coming out with a line of frozen soul food entrees. They are delivering menudo in Hispanic neighborhoods. They're all disappearing, the former meth moms, the mamacitas, the tired laundromat mothers in smocks! Their puzzled husbands abandoned in their Lazy-Boys, hollering for beer, wondering vaguely, "Where did she say she was going?" He comes to the door offering free samples, wearing that smart uniform, talking about "easy and nutritious" but these women don't understand. He's talking about THEM!!

Don't say I didn't warn you.