Last Minute Prep and Arrivals

Mark and The Child went off to New York City for a final hurrah there (during our entire vacation, the Child had not yet been to be The Big City).  They ended up in The Bowery taking a very interesting tour of some Tenements from 1880 and 1930, on a tour called “Hard Times.”

The second most interesting thing about the tour was that the rooms were very small, and the bathrooms were more like outhouses on the side of the building.  The most interesting thing from the 1930’s tour was that in one Catholic tenement,  there were statues of Mary, paintings of Jesus, and an image of FDR.

The oldest son of Mary’s oldest son appeared with his wife and four children around 11 AM.   The oldest child was six, and the youngest was one.  After some initial shyness, the two oldest children (H. and A.) managed to talk me into a Kung Fu session.  Since the only Kung Fu I know is actually the “John-Fu” form “Crouching Dragon Reaches for the Chocolate,” I had to make do against them with superior height and weight.   This was sufficient to deflect their strikes and brush them aside to the carpet.  For about an hour.  At one point I did pick both of them up and “throw them into the volcano crater,” (an overstuffed chair), but they were immune to lava.

In the back of my mind, I recalled that The Child also used to enjoy being pushed over onto a resting futon, and would have dearly loved if we could have catapulted him across the yard… except that when he was six I want to say he already weighed 70 pounds (which was probably twice as much as H. and A. combined) and I hadn’t been working out at a gym back then.

I am not sure how much longer the Rumble at the Dojo would have lasted, but we were directed to color and put together a cardboard house.  Outside.  With no karate chops.

More relatives arrived, and Mark and The Child returned from their New York City Adventure.  The evening concluded with lots of pizza.