Parents !!!

Saturday we had our yearly Halloween aka "Fall Festival" neighborhood party. You know the drill - pony rides, chili cookoffs, costume contests, etc. All geared toward a fun ol' time for the kiddies. Yet there always seems to be at least one parent who doesn't get it that the whole thing is supposed to be fun.

To set the stage: one of the activities was a small bounce house. A rotating group of neighborhood volunteers was monitoring the bounce house - 8 kids at a time, 5 minutes per rotation. Now this bounce house was pretty closed-in. Not a lot of visibility from the outside.

So, I'm standing in line with the Princess for awhile (maybe I should call her Tinker Bell 'cause that's her costume this year...). We make our way to the front of the line and are patiently waiting our turn when a woman comes storming up with her daughter in tow. I would guess her daughter was in the 8-10 year old range. The mom starts going off on the volunteer about how her daughter had been hit in the mouth by some kid in the bounce house. Now I had been in line for quite awhile and that mom had been no where around. I saw no damage to the daughter, just a pouty face. Yet this woman started getting more-and-more aggressive toward the volunteer like it was her fault or as if something really horrible had happened. The volunteer patiently kept explaining she couldn't watch the kids all the time, was just a volunteer, and generally handling it more calmly than I would have. Finally the woman yelled she was going to hunt down the kid who hit her daughter so she could "tell his parents what she thinks about it." Apparently thoughts like "why weren't you watching your daughter" never crossed her own mind. For sure this lady's daughter will grow up having a hard time dealing with life on her own.

Oh, I saw the pair about 30 minutes later. The mother was still fuming. Yeah, they had a great time at the festival.

And folks wonder why no one likes to volunteer...