
And yes, I’m bringing back the photo…it’s not totally their fault, but still.
Tonight, I went to have dinner with the family out at my brother’s campsite east of the city. Steaks, campfires, smores, fresh colorado peaches (one of my favorites) and maybe a beer all while playing frisbee with my older nephew and watching the little one kick and goo around. In all, a good Saturday night.
Well, it would have been stellar had there not been so much stupid in the campground. This location has about 70 sites in one ring and 40 more in a second ring. All connected by a one-way loop of road with speed bumps, recent college grads/students working as “park rangers” of sorts, and a whole mess of motorhomes, pull-behinds, and fifth wheels. Now while my family has always used camping as a good way to get away from everything (minus what cell phones bring us into and taking a laptop/aircard for radar watching) so we can just relax and play with the kids, a lot of people just gather in large groups to drink very heavily while letting their kids just run around the loop all night. Bicycles, roller blades, wagons, carts, and whatever else the kids are on all taking the children away from their parents. Which is apparently exactly what the parents want, very little to do with parenting so they can get drunk as hell.
Hell, the folks next door were so busy yacking and drinking they didn’t notice that their own kids were trying to lock each other in the storage compartments of the fifth-wheel camper they had. But that wasn’t the worst part. Right out front of our campsite was one of the speed bumps meant to keep everyone at 10 mph or less on the one-way street loop. That speed bump was causing quite the trouble for the kids.
1. Brilliant “thug life” wannabe 11 year old thought his skateboard (with 2 inch clearance) could just ride over the speed bump (4 inch high). FAIL. And a skinned knee.
2. Roller blading kid… same thing, skinned hand.
3. Little girl hanging onto the back of another girl riding a bike. Riding girl decided it would be fun to “ramp” the speed bump and forgot about her sister on her back. That resulted in dumping her sister onto the asphalt… and she had a helluva cry. Where were the parents? about 1/4 mile away… thankfully a nearby mother helped the girl out in a hurry.
Now, a lot of that is just kids being kids… accidents happen, I’m ok with that. Kids get hurt. But what bugged me the most was the fact that the parents were still letting their kids ride their bikes, roller blades, etc… around the campground after it is pitch black minus the moonlight. The only lights in the campground are those on the structures for public use (shower area, restroom, and that’s about it) Heck, I had a hard time determining if a marshmallow I had on a stick only 3 feet ahead was burnt or not. So now the drunk parents have no idea where their kids are, and they are dropping like flies to bike wrecks, getting lost, walking into the wrong campsite, and worst of all, just SITTING ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD WITH THEIR HANDS INCHES FROM BEING RUN OVER!
At one point, a parent (drunk as ever) looked at her daughter who was laying in the road, in the dark, in prime run-me-over position and said “that’s nice honey, play nice”
It was a nice evening worth of food and conversation, but we were sitting there expecting to see a kid get killed. Thankfully, when I left, no one was dead…. but I’ll call out in the morning to be sure.
Please, if you become a parent, do not discard brain… and teach your kids to stay close.