That's right. We stand out in the heat at 3 in the afternoon, when the temperature is so high that roads are buckling, and we watch the demolition of the local McDonald's. That's just how exciting my life is. Don't be a hater.
Sweating like my husband does when I declare, "I have an idea", we stood outside for an hour and a half, along with a bunch of other crazy, bored Okies, and cheered every time a big piece of the building went down.
As the bulldozer got closer to the Playland, we moved around the building and positioned ourselves in just the right spot to witness the destruction of that great monument to flu germs, Group A Strep and God knows how many different strains of fecal bacteria. Look at all that glass. We knew it was going to be so cool to watch (and hear) that thing go down.
We waited with bated (yes, bated...not baited) breath. You could almost cut the anticipation with a knife...or a blow torch. And then...the darn bulldozer stopped! Are you kidding me? No, they weren't. They told us to come back the next day at noon to see it torn down.
"Well forget it," I said to myself. "We are not about to come back out here tomorrow and stand around in this heat just to see that."
Only we did. And this time we brought friends. I'm pathetic. And I had another 5 pounds I needed to sweat off.
What?!? It's not like there are a lot of other options for summer fun here, people!
So we got there at noon...and we waited. We waited while they re-fueled the bulldozer or backhoe or whatever that thing is. We waited while they cleaned the filters. We waited a long time. Let's just say that they did not start at anything resembling noon.
At one point I had a conversation with one of the kids (and I don't know which one, as they are together so much that they are pretty much interchangeable at this point) that went something like this.
Random Kid: Can we puh-lease go?
Me: No. We can't. We have sat out here this long in this ridiculous heat. We're not leaving until the building comes down.
Random Kid: Pleeeease? It's sooo hot!
Me: No. I didn't make any of you come. I asked if you wanted to and you said yes.
Random Kid: But if we had known it would be this hot out here and take this long, we wouldn't have come.
Me: I'm sorry. We are here and we're staying until they knock it down.
Random Kid: Come on! Even LDub is ready to go.
I have no idea why "even LDub" being ready to leave was supposed to be convincing. I guess LDub has a pretty low threshold for things that excite him. Maybe he's easy to entertain. My kind of kid!
Me: Ok, let's wait five more minutes. If they haven't started by then, we'll leave.
And then they started!
I wish I had a recording of the squeals from the kids when that first pane of glass broke.
And it was gone. Given the amount of time I spent trying to ply my kids out of the tunnels, combined with the knowledge that so many Wet Ones gave their lives over the years thanks to the Playplace, I should have felt a twinge of sadness or something. But really, all I felt was dehydrated.
As I was writing this blog, Thing 2 (16 years old now) walked up to me, looked at one of the pictures and said, "Yeah. That whole trip yesterday? Totally not worth it." Which pretty much sums up my feelings about the whole ordeal.
UPDATE: Tim and Patti Rich, the owners of this McDonald's, are truly wonderful people. Read these articles about what they are doing for their employees during the time the store is being rebuilt.
Tim and Patti Rich
Tim and Patti Rich Again
Oh my! Love this post. Really captures why I'm glad I didn't go. Felt a little guilty at first. After reading this, I feel much better!
ReplyDeleteBTW, LDub has video on his camera of the demolition. If you want to hear the squeals of the kiddos. Hilarious!