I had to install Google Earth and look at three different maps of Idlewild Park to figure this out, but my best guess as to the distance between the boarding area for the Little Rascals Handcars in Raccoon Lagoon and the furthest part of its track is about 156.5 feet.
In (I think) July of (probably) 1998, my wife and I stood in line, watched our son climb into one of those little carts and start cranking away with jubilant clumsiness and a crooked smile on his weird little face. A moment later, he was 156.5 feet away. My wife and I both instantly realized that this was as far away from both of us at the same time as he had ever been.
I know that makes us seem like weird, annoying, overly protective parents, but there's also a lot of evidence that we're not. With both of our kids, there have been plenty of moments of, "go ahead and jump, I'll try and catch you," or, "well... eat it and then we'll know if you're allergic to it." And there was some confused turmoil during the 1996 Fourth of July parade when my wife gave, straight-up gave, our ten month old son to a woman neither of us knew and let her stroll away beyond the reach of our vision -- simply because, and this seems like a very good reason to specifically not do this very thing, the lady asked her to. [1]
If clinginess has been the issue, it has been a small one, at least compared to the larger issue of not really having anything better to do. What might seem like a wealth of parental guidance and supervision is mostly just poverty of imagination.
We did finally ask for a babysitter on the night our daughter was born. And then again in 2003, when my wife and I decided that we needed to see Freddy vs. Jason. [2]
Anyway, the whole reason I'm bringing this up is that my son is currently in France. He's graduated from the handcart to a flying metal tube that crosses the ocean at 600 mph and which is, yes -- I know, a jillion times safer than the car trip to the airport, but... come on. How do those work? [3]
In (I think) July of (probably) 1998, my wife and I stood in line, watched our son climb into one of those little carts and start cranking away with jubilant clumsiness and a crooked smile on his weird little face. A moment later, he was 156.5 feet away. My wife and I both instantly realized that this was as far away from both of us at the same time as he had ever been.
I know that makes us seem like weird, annoying, overly protective parents, but there's also a lot of evidence that we're not. With both of our kids, there have been plenty of moments of, "go ahead and jump, I'll try and catch you," or, "well... eat it and then we'll know if you're allergic to it." And there was some confused turmoil during the 1996 Fourth of July parade when my wife gave, straight-up gave, our ten month old son to a woman neither of us knew and let her stroll away beyond the reach of our vision -- simply because, and this seems like a very good reason to specifically not do this very thing, the lady asked her to. [1]
If clinginess has been the issue, it has been a small one, at least compared to the larger issue of not really having anything better to do. What might seem like a wealth of parental guidance and supervision is mostly just poverty of imagination.
We did finally ask for a babysitter on the night our daughter was born. And then again in 2003, when my wife and I decided that we needed to see Freddy vs. Jason. [2]
Anyway, the whole reason I'm bringing this up is that my son is currently in France. He's graduated from the handcart to a flying metal tube that crosses the ocean at 600 mph and which is, yes -- I know, a jillion times safer than the car trip to the airport, but... come on. How do those work? [3]
And, can you imagine how many feet away Charles de Gaulle Airport is from my house? [4]
I should be freaked out that he's 43% of the way to the opposite side of the hemisphere. [5] I don't really even know what physical distance is supposed to mean within the framework of communication anymore. Human beings have been talking to each other transcontinentally for much longer than I've been alive, but the thing that has changed in my lifetime (hell, even in my son's lifetime) is the mundanity of it. Chatting with my son feels exactly the same whether he's at school, or Philadelphia or the dining room. For all intents and purposes, part of me has come to believe that he lives in the little box in my pocket.
I don't have a point. [6] My son's on the other side of the ocean and it's weird. And it's no big deal, which is also weird. Part of my head is spinning out of control because it doesn't want to be that far away from my kid, but each morning, there's nothing there but happiness because I get to wake up to pictures of eight hundred year old buildings, ancient, twisty streets and the crooked smile on his weird little face.
[1] A year or so later, not to be outdone, I initiated a game of "Hide and Seek" in the men's department of JC Penny's which quickly evolved into a game of "Hide and Seek and Act Natural and Find That Kid Before His Mom And Grandmother Realize You've Totally Lost Him".
[2] My wife and I look back on this with a shared sense of bewilderment. We'd spent a lot of time seeing movies like this in our formative years and we had assumed it was because we liked them. As it turns out, what we enjoyed was being young and hanging out with our friends.
Do you know they referenced the Columbine shootings in that movie? FUN, you assholes, we left our kids home to have Fun.
[3] The very first entry on the Wikipedia Common Misconceptions page under the heading of Physics is that the Equal Transit Time Principal, which employs the Bernoulli effect, which every public school student demonstrated to full satisfaction by blowing across the top of an unsupported length of paper and witnessing said paper rise to a horizontal position, and which even a dope like me can understand, is not true. And there is a contingent that opposes the notion that it's actually true in some sort of smaller, more technical way, a description of which will leave a dope like me in the dust.
I don't need to understated how airplanes fly, but I'd like there to be a consensus.
I should be freaked out that he's 43% of the way to the opposite side of the hemisphere. [5] I don't really even know what physical distance is supposed to mean within the framework of communication anymore. Human beings have been talking to each other transcontinentally for much longer than I've been alive, but the thing that has changed in my lifetime (hell, even in my son's lifetime) is the mundanity of it. Chatting with my son feels exactly the same whether he's at school, or Philadelphia or the dining room. For all intents and purposes, part of me has come to believe that he lives in the little box in my pocket.
I don't have a point. [6] My son's on the other side of the ocean and it's weird. And it's no big deal, which is also weird. Part of my head is spinning out of control because it doesn't want to be that far away from my kid, but each morning, there's nothing there but happiness because I get to wake up to pictures of eight hundred year old buildings, ancient, twisty streets and the crooked smile on his weird little face.
* * *
[1] A year or so later, not to be outdone, I initiated a game of "Hide and Seek" in the men's department of JC Penny's which quickly evolved into a game of "Hide and Seek and Act Natural and Find That Kid Before His Mom And Grandmother Realize You've Totally Lost Him".
[2] My wife and I look back on this with a shared sense of bewilderment. We'd spent a lot of time seeing movies like this in our formative years and we had assumed it was because we liked them. As it turns out, what we enjoyed was being young and hanging out with our friends.
Do you know they referenced the Columbine shootings in that movie? FUN, you assholes, we left our kids home to have Fun.
[3] The very first entry on the Wikipedia Common Misconceptions page under the heading of Physics is that the Equal Transit Time Principal, which employs the Bernoulli effect, which every public school student demonstrated to full satisfaction by blowing across the top of an unsupported length of paper and witnessing said paper rise to a horizontal position, and which even a dope like me can understand, is not true. And there is a contingent that opposes the notion that it's actually true in some sort of smaller, more technical way, a description of which will leave a dope like me in the dust.
I don't need to understated how airplanes fly, but I'd like there to be a consensus.
[4] It's 20,689,316.44 feet, which is 132.200.1 times further away than he was at Idlewild.
Just for fun, if that's what you want to call it, I figured out that if my son had been traveling toward France from Washington Hospital at a constant velocity since the day he was born, he'd be moving away from us at a rate of 1.91 feet per minute to get there on the day he was scheduled to land.
[5] But not to the other side of the planet. Interestingly, if you were to "dig to China" from southwest Pennsylvania, you'd be heading for a spot just off the coast of Perth.
You know what? Let me go ahead and close the Google Earth window, because it's becoming very hard to concentrate.
[6] No kidding.
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