Verse 358
My wife bought a baby carriage to push bottles of water across Legoland. Let me repeat that. My wife bought a baby carriage to push bottles of water across Legoland. We were there for two days, the seven of us. It was overcast with a high of 82 degrees. There were also a number of umbrellas in the baby stroller, but as there was no rain in the forecast, I inquired why. I was told they were in case it got ‘too hot.’ Unsure of the relationship between using umbrellas on a cloudy day and staying cool, I stayed silent. Day one teemed with ambition. We proceeded into the park as it opened, one full hour earlier than it opens to the general public because we stayed in the adjacent Legoland Hotel where chairs and beds, walls and knick-knackery everywhere are made from Lego bricks or an illusion thereof. At dinner the night before — just after arriving from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts respectively — we had dinner in the hotel’s one restaurant. My newly unemployed mother-in-law ordered one twelve ounce beer with dinner for sixteen dollars. Even though I didn’t purchase one, I believe it’s morally correct to steal from any establishment willing to charge so much for a beer. I became obsessed with what I intended to steal before the day was done.
Our age range is 8–58: my wife, her brother, his two kids aged eight and thirteen, our Joe, her mom, and me. The kids are so shittily homeschooled by their mother that both have been hacked with speech defects. Their parents don’t engage with them and neither do other kids because of the home schooling. When they’re general crassness is thus accounted for, phrases such as: ‘I gotta take a cwap,’ become the common vernacular. I drift to the periphery, stuff a lone airpod on the far-side ear to surreptitiously muffle a portion of the rabble’s babble. As my mother-in-law compounded my pleasure by having customized tank tops made for the trip, I look like a park employee when I stand alone, which is often. I didn’t realize this until the second person asked me where to get a park map.
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My sister-in-law didn’t make the trip as she’s divorcing Jess’s brother. She’s engaged to a young man despite living with another man and his kids. Of course, my brother-in-law bends my ear about this a lot because he and his former wife moved in with another couple about a year ago when everything was going fine and, weirdly, the open marriage with all four in the same bed didn’t work out. He vapes compulsively, which reminds me of something I don’t often consider: some people vape. Completely slipped my mind. He details his anger in a muddled monologue, emphasizing how much he doesn’t care after every dramatically vented vignette. I tune him out, barely being pleasant, planning what I intend to steal and how.
Heavy people everywhere are photographing themselves and making commonplace remarks. “I wonder how much cantaloupe they use in a day?” “Wow, you were hungry” (said during and after every meal as though it’s a surprising point of interest). At lunch, we enter a dark food court themed to ye olde Lego knights. There are three lines — pizza, Chinese, and salad. Pizza and Chinese are fifty people deep and the salad line is empty, the station unmanned. I stand incredulously for a few minutes until a surprised looking chap in clear vinyl gloves asks if I want a salad. I do. It ends up mostly wet chickpeas over greens, but it looks better than General Tso’s hyena fetus. I eat my salad sitting in mulch beside a three foot Lego figure eating a plastic feudal ham hock. My niece and nephew eat pizza and nap on their grandmother, unaccustomed to the normal waking and sleeping hours imposed on them over the last thirty-six hours. My mother-in-law is exhausted, mostly staring at her mess of Legoland Chinese food. She’s too hot and tired to eat. I reflect on the morning. It consisted of walking short intervals, standing in small lines, sitting in air conditioned rides, and generally just being outside on a cloudy day. I begin thinking that Joe and I are the only people from here. By here, I mean Earth — because no one else in our party seems reconciled to being a human on this planet. They’re like lightning bugs lethargic in mason jars in the morning.
A pall immediately shrouds the afternoon. Despite talking a big game that we were going to ‘close this place’ by staying until 9pm for the Saturday night fireworks, even the next few hours look dubious. The eight year-old complains she’s ‘hawt,’ but her father’s vaping on his cell phone near a family restroom. She complains again and the grandmother gives her an umbrella. I play dumb, raise an eyebrow, and ask how the umbrella is meant to help. “It’ll cool her down,” she confidently responds. I eye the deeply clouded sky, dark gray with no breaks of blue. I catch a look from my wife and drop the matter. The thirteen year-old complains that he needs to go to bed because he’s accustomed to bedtime at 5am. My mother-in-law responds to the group that “we keep praying he’ll start keeping a normal schedule.” With a furrowed brow, I explain to her that we don’t need to invoke God on this one. Maybe a parent could just implement a schedule for their child and give the Good Lord the day off lest we deceive ourselves that only divine intervention could right this particular ship.
By 4pm — five hours before the looked-for fireworks — we returned to the hotel, defeated. Several of them are quantifying their walking output for the day on their Dick Tracy Apple phones and find their four miles walked a victory of the human condition. I push the baby carriage somewhat uncomfortably as I have a stolen Dumbledore Lego jabbing my penis down my underwear.
