At the Port

It’s 2:30 in the afternoon and my two youngest children and I have been enjoying the Port of Portland’s Seaport Celebration. It’s an annual event that we discovered last year – on a MUCH cooler day.

This is the one day each year that the Port opens its doors to the public for music, food and informational activities so that we can all learn the hows and whys, the whats and wheres of how the Port operates. They give out re-useable bags and water bottles and stickers and pens and have a drawing for special prizes.

It’s fun.
Really.

Which is why we decided to brave the weather and return this year.
This day.

This 102° day.

This102° day, in the middle of a black, asphalt, parking lot with no shade save for a few canopy tents sprinkled about to shade employees who are manning the information tables.

This102° day, in the middle of a black, asphalt, parking lot with no shade save for a few canopy tents sprinkled about to shade employees who are manning the information tables with barely a hint of a breeze blowing against the heat waves that rise off the scorched earth.

We’ve been here for over two hours and we’ve finished our fun. We’re waiting, along with a small crowd of other hot, sweaty, tired people, for the shuttle bus to pick us up and return us to our car.

The bus arrives and we all pile on.

We pile on to an old yellow school bus that looks as though it has recently been refurbished with seats that seem to have new-ish brown vinyl. The windows are all open, but the only air you can feel moving are the currents of heat that swarm past our bodies as we travel toward the back of the bus. We slide our sweaty selves across a seat, and the back of my right thigh grabs onto the vinyl and my skin screeches across the remainder of the bench. None of the other hot, sweaty, tired people notice because they are all doing their own versions of the sweaty squack. The hot, sweaty, children who bounced in in the morning have melted into puddles of petulance.

This is when my daughter decides to strike.

“Hey,” she smiles to her brother, “what happens when you take the “s” out of safe and the “f” out of way?"
“Huh?” he replies, face scrunched into an irritated grimace, a tiny drop of sweat forming in front of his left ear and hesitating before it starts to roll slowly toward his chin.
My daughter sighs and repeats herself. “Take the “s” out of safe and the “f” out of way."
My son looks annoyed and says, “A-way?”
“No”, YD breaths, “ take the “s” out of SAFE and the “f” out of WAY.”
“I DID!” my son snaps, irritation erupting and oozing down his sweaty face.
“No”, she says in the condescending way that a teenaged girl reserves for a younger sibling, “you took the “s” AND the “f” out of SAFE. Take the “S” out of safe and the “F” out of way!
By now, YS is totally exasperated. He glares at his sister and, at the TOP of his voice he yells, “THERE'S NO "F" IN WAY!!!!”

YD dissolves into tears of laughter.

“What?!” snaps YS, and, raising his voice a few decibels he repeats, “THERE'S NO F'N WAY!!!”
The dimmer switch over his head slowly illuminates the light bulb. He begins to chuckle and then starts laughing so hard he almost falls off the seat into the aisle.
I join my children and my stomach starts to hurt from laughing so much.
Barely able to speak through his laughter and still at the top of his lungs YS leans against me and yells, “Mummy, Mummy -- THERE'S NO F'N WAY!!!”

The rest of the people on the bus...
Blank stares -- totally clueless!

Half of them get off at the first stop, even though the bus driver announces that he will be making three stops so as to get people closer to their cars.

We wait until the second stop before we climb off. As we begin to back out of our space, hot, sweaty, grumpy fellow passengers trudge past us.
We watch them as the make a dusty path through the loose gravel parking lot toward their cars, which are parked just past the third stop.
Apparently they are of the opinion that it is better to brave the evils that you know than face the crazies that you don’t.

My children and I turn up the air conditioner to full blast, flip on the oldies and laugh all the way home.