So over the weekend we took the Bean to this place called Kiddie Acres, which is just down the street from our house and really, that’s its only redeeming quality. Actually, that’s not true, it does have ponies and putt-putt and rides for kids under 10 to enjoy but if you’re an adult who likes beer you’re pretty much fucked. But we love our kid despite the fact that he doesn’t appreciate beer (yet) so we took him anyway.
Kiddie Acres has apparently been around for four hundred years, at least, that’s what it looks like. The rides are rusty and rickety and the signs are all faded and I guess that’s supposed to be charming but to me it just looks like one big safety hazard. But, whatever. The kid got to ride a pony and I didn’t have to spend an hour in a car with a whiny Bean and the Big Bean’s classic rock collection to get to the pumpkin patch where we’d take a bunch of pictures of the Bean sitting on some pumpkins and then, well, okay, that pretty much covers it.
Besides, Kiddie Acres is what we like to call “OLD SCHOOL,” which translates to “REALLY FUCKING DANGEROUS,” you know, like the stuff WE used to play on when WE were kids, back in the days when parents didn’t notice or care if their kids accidentally caught fire.
You know. The good old days.
Personally, I was a latch key kid. If you were born after 1990 you probably don’t know what that is, because it was around that time parents finally realized that letting kids walk home with keys strapped around their necks to let themselves into the house where they would hang out and find shit to destroy before the grown-ups got home probably wasn’t the best idea. Until then, though, parents were stupid, my own included, and I spent countless afternoons doing equally stupid shit like eating an entire bag of Oreos and then spinning myself around in my stepdad’s office chair until I barfed on the carpet and left it for my mom to clean up when she got home from her 9-hour work day.
(How I survived to adulthood I will never know.)
I also watched obscene amounts of television, particularly reruns of Alice and Get Smart and the Carol Burnett Show, which I believe is at least partially behind why I’m so fucking hilarious all the time. Don’t snort, losers. YOU DON’T KNOW ME.
And speaking of TV, I had one. In my room. WITH cable. Which, back in the olden golden days, was a big fucking deal. I had MTV back when it still showed actual music videos, and I could stay up all night watching soft-core porn like that Emmanuelle bullshit on Cinemax and super high quality teen films like Just One of the Guys and Zapped! on HBO, over and over and over again until I had every nano-second memorized. And my mother had absolutely no idea what I was doing because she was trying to pay the bills and have some kind of life and besides, I was such an asshole I’m pretty sure she was just glad I was in my room and not out loose in the house giving her broody stares and generally acting like a dicktard.
My life was incredibly awesome.
Anyway, I keep forgetting what my point was but I’m pretty sure it was important. I think I got a little distracted by my memories of soft core porn and Meatballs. Oh, wait – I know. Here are some pictures of my unbelievably amazing and gorgeous child playing on the rickety shit at Kiddie Acres. Highly recommended if you’re in Austin, Texas, have a two-year-old, and aren’t afraid of rust poisoning.
Enjoy.
Stumble it!
Tags: being two is no excuse for not loving beer, I miss the old days
October 20th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
you pretty much summed up my childhood after school. tv TV TV! also love the Carol Burnett Show. I wanted to be called “Rebecky” after a certain skit…
October 20th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
We haven’t been to kiddie acres in ages. I think it might be time for a return trip!
October 20th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Oh my God, every time I drive by Kiddie Acres I marvel that it’s still open. We used to live down the street, too, when my girls were that age and we made the pilgrimage to Kiddie Acres. They’re 21 and 19 now and it looked about the same then as it does now.
If “amusement parks” can be zombies, this one qualifies.
October 20th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Beej! It’s like you and I lived dual lives!! Except, of course, I’m older than you, so we would have been living this dual life in one of those freaky late 80s/early 90s body switch movies. Like, you’re Kirk Cameron and I’m Dudley Moore, and you’re my kid now and I’m your dad…and wait a minute..
Also, I used to rock out some Kraft mac and cheese after school. Sometimes, get this, I served it up in a big old wine glass my parents kept above the fridge. Classy with a big old K!
Finally – straight up adorable, the both of ya!
October 20th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
I had this thing in my backyard when I was younger that we all called “The Climbing Thing”…no shit. “Hey Mom, I’m going outside to play on the climbin’ thing!” It was nasty, and moldy with nails coming half way out. I’m pretty sure my Dad built that thing with lumber from a house that burned down.
October 20th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Ahhh… Carol Burnett… the memories! Don’t forget those other classics like “Animal House” and getting in trouble for not doing homework or chores when the parents got home from work… oh wait, that’s me. Never mind. Good times. =)
October 20th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Dude. I think we had the same childhood.
And?
OMG! You are so cute!
October 20th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Oh I went there a few years back with the boys I nannied for. It’s the little amusement park that time forgot.
October 20th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Ahhh the good ol’ days…..I would come home & watch “You can’t do that on Television” and wish I could be slimed too when I said “I don’t know”. Movies I loved growing up: One Crazy Summer (I heart John Cusack) and Teen Witch (Louise!). There’s others, I just can’t remember them now (because of my old age).
Lil Bean is so cute. As far as the park goes, that’s why they invented Tetnus shots.
October 20th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I am completely naming my next band Dicktard. It was going to be “Daddy and the Elastic Stockings” but this is just so, so much better.
October 20th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
This reminds me of when we had this…birdie tournament in the cul-de-sac. We had these tennis-like rackets (but cheaper and flimsier) and we found one of those birdie things from whatever that sport is where they hit it….badmitton (just came to me)…I think we got up to like 50 total hits back and forth or something…SO FUN.
We played in the creek and the woods all the time, too.
October 20th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Your son is adorable!
October 20th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I think I am older than you and FADKOG and so many other commenters!
I loved Speed Racer, and Magilla Gorilla and Grape Ape in elementary school- then when I got older…the soaps. O’ the Soaps! I remember running home from school to watch Luke rape Laura on General Hospital. To Chuck Mangione’s Rise. With a bowl of popcorn. A real event. Remember that?
ps- you Beans are adorAble
October 20th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
I loved this post. I was a latch keyer–way before the cautionary words “screen time”
For me, less Oreos, more canned ravioli followed by cap’n crunch followed by dinner.
Good lord, we are going to have to feed kids like us some day.
AND read labels and care about preservatives and sodium and artificial colors and corn syrup and and and
fuck.
October 21st, 2009 at 12:18 am
you are such a nut. I love it
October 21st, 2009 at 8:29 am
I swear I would have noticed if you had actually caught on fire.
October 21st, 2009 at 11:29 am
i thought she was on fire most of the time. Fortunately, she had you to make it work.
October 21st, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I’ve always heard that Kiddie Acres was like something out of “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” so we’ve never gone. Doesn’t look so bad, though.
And Carol Burnett is my role model.
October 21st, 2009 at 7:54 pm
OK, seriously? I’m 23, and I look at photos of you, and I’m all, WTF, this woman is FUCKING SIXTEEN, why does she have a small child and better fucking skin than I do and one of those actual proper smiles with teeth that I always try to do when someone flips a camera in my direction, only I end up looking like a poorly groomed donkey because my top teeth stick out and my bottom ones go in, which on someone with two legs isn’t generally the desired look? DAMN YOU, WOMAN!
Also, I’m totally one of the last generation of latch-key kids, only I’m Australian and so we never, ever called it that, because, WTF, ‘latch key’? Who has a fucking LATCH on their door? Don’t know about you guys in the USA, but Down Under, we’ve generally replaced the latch-chain with LOCKS, you know, to KEEP THE PEOPLE OUT. Only me being me, I’d always get to the door, realise I’d lost my key, spend twenty minutes climbing down from the walkway to the back balcony, climbing onto the barbeque and shimmiying in through the toilet window, the width of which was approximately the size of your averadge moth, strain both hamstrings reaching down to the toilet seat, fall onto the sink, stagger up to the front door, haul my bag inside, rummage around for whatever novel I was reading and realise, as my hand encountered a small piece of metal in the bottom, crud-filled corner of the bag, that I’d had the key all along, only it had FALLEN OUT OF MY FUCKING WALLET, and I’d strained my legs for NOTHING.
Goddamn balcony antics.
October 21st, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Your mom is funny.
And you – you look like you’re like 19 years old in these pictures!! How did you DO that? (Are you 19 years old?) (No, you can’t be or the whole nostalgic post about latch keys and Carol Burnett would not be possible.) (Maybe it’s the bangs.(?))
October 21st, 2009 at 11:44 pm
you so think you’re such hot shit, don’t you?…. you are. and i hate you. wtf, seriously. these photos are ridiculous and you’re gorgeous and YOU SUCK.
i’m glad i am in the category of being able to remember the good old days by a month. you think spinning in a CHAIR is dangerous? when i was nine i was cleaning the keyboard out with the air pressure squirter thing and i accidently got really, really high. i found out later that that stuff can kill you, like a russian roulette. yeah, that’s right, i’m bad ass.
i was totally a latchkey kid. but i wasn’t smart enough to have it around my neck so i lost it all the time. and at the end of the year, when we’d clean out our desks, i’d find like eight house keys and then mother would start yelling at me because robbers could come and steal all our crap. i think she forgets that it’s bonita and the worst thing that ever happened here was a bench got stolen and thrown into some bushes.
and hey, amy2boys, i’m 19 and i am very nostalgic about latch keys and the carol burnett show.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:26 am
I was a total latch-key kid,too. Actually, I don’t even think I had a key, my mom just left the sliding glass door unlocked. We lived in an apartment complex and I was like the only kid in our side of the complex. I would eat chocolate pudding packs drowned in Cool Whip. And for me, it was all about The Monkeys and (sigh) Davey Jones.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:43 am
Awesomeness. As usual. Oh, and Bean is cute too.
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:45 am
I remember MTV. We never had exposure to cable programming until our trailer burned down one sunny day and we spent several weeks in a Howard Johnson’s. My sisters and I shared one room that was attached to the room where my parents stayed. They hated that we could watch shit that they would never approve of. Like MTV. The first video I ever saw was Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey.”
Yeah, I’m a bit messed up now . . .
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I was a latch key kid, too. I used to go through all my mom’s romance novels and look for sex scenes.
I also used to eat hot chocolate mix straight from the container.
Question: which of those facts is more disturbing?
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I remember when MTV was actually MUSICtv and not boobs stuffed into bikini tops and ass cheeks hanging out of thongs and reality shows set to music…
I was the poster child for latch-key kids, back in the day. And OMG the stories I could tell. I probably should come clean about one certain incident that I never ‘fessed up to. I remember the entire week we had off from school right before Thankgiving when I was 14 and my neighbors juvenile delinquent son came over asking if he could borrow my dad’s axe. That should have sent red flags and warning bells off everywhere, but I was stupid and he told me I could help. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that!
I can’t get over how amazingly beautiful your entire family is! And has Bean had a massive growth spurt lately? Seems like his legs got real long, real quick. He’s adorable!
October 24th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I was a latch key kid starting in the 4th grade, but we didn’t have cable and my mom wouldn’t buy Oreos. She wouldn’t even buy Fruit Loops, I had to eat puffed wheat. I’m not fucking kidding you. But! For a time, we did have an in ground pool without a fence. Gasp!
October 25th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
We’re hosting my son’s second birthday party here on Sunday, and I’m so glad to hear this review because we totally kick it old school.
p.s. Dicktard is my new favorite word.
October 26th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Remembering the things I did as a latch key kid is what is making me so nervous about my daughter becoming one next year. The one big rule I had was not to let anyone in the house, and I broke that pretty much every single day. But I did start dinner most nights, so I guess as long as I can get her to do that I’ll be ahead.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
That boy is stupidly pretty. Never cut off those curls, man.