Loaded Baked Potato

 I recently took my parents and my 9 year old out for dinner in downtown Denver while on our way to the Festival of Death (see below). Once off the train, we alternate taking the free bus and walking to decide on a place to eat. I notice my nine year old is getting a bit nervous. She has been to a big city before but she spends most of her time in a small town with trips to the “city” once a week (the city being population 50,000 as opposed to nearly 650,000) so, the first time we pass a man yelling at himself, I find she is trying to fold herself into my side. She also can’t figure out why my parents keep talking to random strangers. Such as the courier whose legs are complimented upon by her grandpa. She wants to know why. Why would someone comment about a perfect strangers legs? In New Zealand, people pass you on the street with little or no eye contact but, in the States if you are walking  along, often conversations occur with random strangers. She feels the need after each one to say  'Why was he saying that to us??' 
After a while, we stop at a deli (just to set the scene here, this is not a restaurant, it is a deli; it serves sandwiches, soups, salads and pastries…) and place our order. My Dad goes last and he asks if he can have a baked potato with chili on it. The poor teenager at the till is very confused and says ‘ummmm. You want chili?’

‘No I want a baked potato with chili on it. Do you have a baked potato?’ 

My mother then tries to explain what a baked potato is to the now very red-faced young man who is still trying to smile at us. ‘You know, a baked potato. You take a potato, poke it with a fork and bake it in the oven until it is cooked.’

‘It says you have a "loaded baked potato" right there on your menu.’ Dad says with confidence. I can’t see it anywhere, so cannot try to help. But then the server nods and places the order. When it comes to our table, there is just a bowl of chili with a bread roll. Dad says to a nearby server ‘there is supposed to be a baked potato with that.’ 
The server looks very confused. ‘We don’t have baked potato’

Dad says, ‘On your menu it says "loaded baked potato".’

‘Umm... we have potato soup…’

‘But it said loaded baked potato…’

‘Yeah, that’s loaded baked potato soup.’

Dad studies his tiny bowl of chili that looks like a kids portion and, in fact, matches the size of my daughter's Mac and Cheese, which we got as a side dish to my half a sandwich. A little defeated he takes the bite of chili.

About half way through the meal, Dad starts to get worried. ‘Melody… I haven’t seen a single bus pass by…’

I say, ‘Dad, that’s not where the busses run. 16^th St is behind you.’ I begin to worry about how Mom and Dad will navigate around their hometown after I am gone...

Since we have eaten very little, we decide to get some cookies but there are no chocolate chip ones. It should be noted here that, if you go to purchase a cookie and they are out of chocolate chip, you should just walk away; very few other cookies are worth the money or the calories. We ignore this sound piece of advice, that I usually adhere to with strictness, and buy the inferior cookies. Mom and I share because, as stated in a previous post, if you share a cookie this negates all calories. Unfortunately, she drops half of her share on the ground. Now, most of you don’t know my mother but for her this is a tragedy, a real one, on par with being robbed.  If she is going to buy something, she will eat every last piece of it; whether she likes it or not, whether it has spoiled in the fridge, or whether it takes an additional twenty minutes to scrape the last few drops or crumbs from the bottom. She does not waste. However, thankfully she does draw the line at eating food off the Downtown Denver sidewalk.  
Dad's disappointing meal finishes with a terrible oatmeal raisin cookie. (Is this really a surprise, I mean, come on, what is the deal? If I wanted a breakfast bar, I would have ordered a breakfast bar. If you are going to make oatmeal cookies, at least put chocolate chips in them.) We divide the terrible oatmeal cookie and my remaining half between us.
I then have to beg and plead with Dad not to eat the cookie off the ground. He claims it will just build his immune system. I am trying to explain that it is not just dirt on the ground and consuming whatever is on the ground is not the same thing as getting immunized and may in fact have the opposite deadly effect. My panic, as I watch the contaminated cookie get closer to his mouth, has made my voice rather loud and shrill and I am not very coherent. I think, just to get me to stop, not because he agrees with me, he concedes and the E. coli cookie remains abandoned on the empty plate.
 We leave the restaurant, navigating around the homeless people being arrested and the man shouting at the fence. Amelia and I leave a couple of paces behind Mom and Dad and are now faced with a choice: Mom has gone to the left to have a look at the miniature golf course with mini replicas of Denver landmarks and Dad has taken off to the right and down the street to catch the bus to the event. Now I find myself trying to yell over the heads of the arresting officers to get Dad to come back, but simultaneously trying not to draw attention to myself because I do not want to be arrested. And you never know when a case of mistaken identity could end up with you in prison...
Amelia runs off to follow Mom (because she lives in a safe country where running off does not normally end up in grievous bodily harm).  Now I am yelling for both Amelia AND Dad, yet still trying to keep a "I-am-a-normal-person" expression on my face. Because I can't get Dad's attention I run over to Amelia and Mom and force them to follow me, ending their tourism. As we serpentine through the homeless people, I remind Amelia not to step on the blanket that is on the ground. She of course asks why. I then have to explain that it is the man's who is being arrested and, even though it looks like trash, it is his and we must respect it. This is all so confusing that she attempts to ask several questions but can't quite form them in her mind and gives up. We finally catch up with Dad who has missed a bus, so is waiting for the next one.  Next time, I am going to put those leashes you can buy for kids on everybody.

Festival of Death

Since many of you know me, it may come as a shock to you (it did to me and I would like to think I know me better than I know myself…) that I don’t like festivals. It seems to be a new development because I have very recent memories of being up for anything. Put some stalls up, invite all the town crazies and I AM IN. However, lately, I seem to choose to skip the festivals in favor of… sitting at home in my pjs. So I have to wonder: am I just getting old or are festivals getting more annoying?      For instance, we decided to head into downtown Denver for the July 4^th Eve festival. We take the train because all of the event organizers pleaded on websites for everyone to take public transport. I spend the whole time yelling at Amelia because she keeps touching the pole and then wiping her hand down her jacket. I can see the germs from the hundreds of people before her now crawling happily up and down the front of her jacket. I realize this makes me seem like a germaphobe; feel free to believe this about me. I am. (I do have a legitimate medical reason though, which at some point I may share with you all. But to be honest, my obsession with germs began in my first microbiology class, so with or without the excuse, I would still have been yelling at her the entire way.)
Anyway, we disembark the Petri dish disguised as a train and head out to find some dinner. This is successful in that we eat some and I get material for an additional blog post about the perils of taking your parents and a 9 year old out to dinner downtown. (To be posted soon, mainly for my sisters' benefit.) Anyway, our bellies full, we jump on a free bus to get closer to the excitement. This is when we make our first mistake. A neighbor had told Dad to get off at California St. because this is the closest stop. It is not. It is the closest stop to the Convention Center… unfortunately, we are not going to the Convention Center, we are going to the Civic Center. Both places starting with double C’s but just because they share letters does not mean they share the same space in the universe. We must now walk eight city blocks. (To be fair to festivals and people who misunderstood where you were going before they gave you directions, I was in a significant amount of pain due to the briefly aforementioned illness, so I am willing to concede that, at this point in our trip, my distaste for festivals may be biased.)  We finally make it. There is a sea of people. (I realize that this is an overused metaphor so give me a moment and I will try to figure out a better one.) We arrive at the front, near the stage and my parents begin trying to make their way into the throng. I start to panic a little. Now, I feel there is some rationale to my panic. Leaving aside the fact that I can see the germ count floating above everyone’s head like an aura, I have been living in a country whose entire population is equal to Denver but spread out over the square miles of Colorado, so I am feeling a little claustrophobic. Also, people don’t tend to hate New Zealanders so I have grown used to the low terror threat. However, living overseas has made me keenly aware of how much other countries hate Americans so I am a little afraid of the security risk of being in a large group of them. Anyway, we decide not to navigate our way through the people penned in like sheep and opt to sit at the front, on the sidewalk, behind the tape that says “Police line :do not cross”. Here is a photo.

The Event staff is very paranoid at this particular location, yelling at anyone who steps over the line that they are not safe and to get back behind the line. It occurs to me that I am sitting next to the flimsy tape and, if it is not safe on the other side of it, how is it that we are safe…?  This apparently has occurred to my daughter as well because, 45 minutes before the fireworks start, she is asking me to cover her ears and is trying to bury herself into me. We can’t tell her when the fireworks will be starting because every time someone gets on stage to talk they sound like the teacher from Charlie Brown, as we are sitting beside the stage, not in front.
The fireworks do get started, with cannon blasts that seem to be pointed directly at us, causing my daughter to scream and instantly sob. She is sure I have brought her to her execution. This is fun, I think to myself as she continues to cry and then screams as pieces from the exploding bombs fall on us, confirming her belief that I have brought her to the Festival of Death. I keep offering to leave but she is too scared to move. (And I think secretly she is against standing up in front of the entire crowd, crying.) I spend the rest of the time hoping it will just end. When it is over, we join the masses of others who have done their civic duty and taken the busses and trains. Unfortunately, none of the busses are running… apparently they just wanted us to get to the event, not leave. So we walk the two miles to the train, picking up millions of others who were at other events downtown and also did their civic duty. We arrive at the train station now really feeling like cattle. And realize that they are not running very many trains (again, I don't know why... perhaps the homeless population is dwindling and they are hoping to boost numbers?) It will be a half hour before we can get on the next train. That is, if we are willing to push old ladies and small children on to the train tracks so we can get home. By sheer luck, we end up standing behind a cute family with an even cuter baby and we shamelessly use them as a human shield to get on the train.  My daughter spends the ride home watching the baby and decides that the tiny feet and hands are the cutest things she has seen in her entire life. And she informs me that she has changed her mind about not wanting a sibling. Now she REALLY wants me to have another baby: boy or girl as long as she gets to hold it. Barely holding on with my screaming-in-pain fingertips, packed in to the cattle car, I ponder what it is about festivals that I used to like.
Perhaps it is just a question of money. The following night, the Fourth of July, we decide to drive our own car, park four blocks from the baseball stadium for 25 dollars, sit in our amazing comfortable seats, eat overpriced  yummy junk food, laugh, sing, dance, watch fireworks from a safe distance, walk the four blocks to the car and make such good time on the way home that Dairy Queen is still open, so we can finish the night off with some ice cream. Maybe money really can buy happiness...