Tipping Point

One evening last week I took the kids down to the community center to play. Scott rode his bike, Katie rode her trike, and I brought up the rear toting some tennis rackets (it is important to Scott that he be first wherever we go). Right away we noticed that last year's paddleboats had been replaced with three red canoes. We decided to give them a try. I snapped a photo of the kids in their lifejackets just before we embarked. That was just a few moments before the tears started.



Scott climbed into the canoe (first, obviously) to sit up front and I helped Katie into the canoe to sit in the middle. Scott was startled how much the canoe tipped side to side when Katie got in. He started to panic a little bit.

If he thought things felt unstable with Katie's 32 pounds in there, well, he really didn't like it when I stepped in the stern. Katie didn't like it either, and she wanted out. I pulled her out for a second and we sat on the dock for a minute while she calmed down and then we tried again. It wasn't much different. In fact, it was worse.

Even though I had unhooked I couldn't push off because Scott had sprawled himself across the canoe to latch onto the edge of the dock and would not let go. Katie continued to cry. Her wailing pushed Scott over the edge and he began to scream. Then Katie started to scream and cry. I sat dumbfounded in the back of the canoe, trying not to laugh.

In the end, we abandoned the attempt and retreated to the safety of the playground, where the kids got on a teeter-totter mounted on a spring, where they proceeded to tip back and forth with laughs and smiles.



Makes sense to me.