Feeling Minnesota (Part II)

(Continued from Part I)

We took a mercifully uneventful train ride to the station closest to the hotel (Did you know that Minneapolis has a red light district?  Cuz I didn't.).  We then took a (Free!? Why, sign me up hyuk, hyuk!) bus to within half a block of our goal and managed to check in without umm...  "checking out", I guess.

Later, we took a pedicab to a restaurant a few blocks away from the hotel; it was a first for all of us (the pedicab... not the restaurant).  As we passed the corner of Nicolette Mall and 7th street we noticed a statue.  At our distance, we couldn't really tell what it was supposed to depict.  It was of an extraordinarily jubilant lady triumphantly lofting... something... in her right hand. Whatever the "something" was, it was just an amorphous blob from our point of view, and I was positive that the plaque below the artwork must have said "WHO WANTS MEATLOAF?!" or "HEY, EVERYONE, I POOPED TODAY!". 

We found out later it was just the Mary Tyler Moore statue and the plaque says "Who can turn the world on with her smile?"  She was holding her tam in mid-toss. It was not a meatloaf.  Or poo.

At the Mall of America we rented a wheelchair to help the wife get around.  I think she thought it was great being wheeled everywhere... to a point.  She didn't think it was as funny as I did when I pointed the chair at a blank wall or featureless column and walked off with the boy.  She did not laugh when I put my cap on the floor in front of her and threw change into it.  She (and, based on the looks I got, all the other people in the LEGO store) didn't think it was amusing whatsoever when I asked her in a loud, slow, deliberate voice normally reserved for speaking to hard-of-hearing nonagenarians "HONEY, DO YOU NEED A SNACK?!  NO?   DO YOU NEED TO GO POOP? ARE YOU SURE?!  YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME!"

Oh, stop.  She's fine.  When we did get to a store she was interested in checking out she got up and did her thing.  Meanwhile,I rocketed the boy around the mall in the chair at as fast as I could go, making sure I was straddling the triple-point of safety, fun, and utter embarrassment of my spouse. 

While she attended her conference my son and I explored the city.  We did this mainly by "penny-hiking" the skyway. We only explored about half of the eleven miles of elevated walkway connecting nearly 70 city blocks but we did find a couple of neat things.  

The first was a really awesome sweets shop where we were able to get sponge candy.  The second was running into the most mellow security guard in the world when we decided to take our lunch in a restricted area near an indoor waterfall.  We had no idea the place was off limits, but he let us finish our sandwiches before making sure we left the secure area we stumbled into. He said we were "exactly the type of intruders he prefers dealing with".

Cool guy.

Not too much more to say about the trip.  I guess I could complain about the hotel staff and the cabbies, or talk about the six-year-old girl we saw in Target throwing the most epic temper-tantrum I have ever seen outside of a cartoon but... meh, you know?  

Let me finish how I started, instead.

In a single day, the boy got to fly in a jet for the first time, sit in the pilot's seat when we landed... where he pretended to machine gun Gate 82 (a legitimate "target of opportunity", I suppose), ride a moving walkway, take a train, a bus, a pedicab, and zoom around a mall in a wheelchair.  

What could match that, right? 

Well, it turns out, when you are five, the answer is "pretty much everything" because everything is still bright and shiny and new.  It's not a matter of being plied with a never-ending parade of expensive toys or gizmos or whatever.  It's all about the "new".

For example, while we were sitting in the airport waiting for the wife to finish giving her lecture and join us there to make our flight home he was happily reading a book and I was watching the clock,  bored.  I tore an old sticker off of our luggage, absentmindedly folded it into an origami swan, and dropped it into the book he was looking at.  He smiled really big, closed the book,  and played with that thing for fifteen minutes.  

Fifteen.  Solid.  Minutes. 

So, it would seem that, "wonderful" is not an analog relative measure... to a five-year-old, at least. It's totally digital.  Something either elicits wonder or it does not.  A plane trip and a moving walkway.  An endless hike through unknown tunnels above busy streets.  A pedicab jaunt and a stupid paper bird.   They all have equal value because of the "new".

Good to know. It looks like Christmas just got a whole lot less expensive... :)