Death in the afternoon

As a parent, you're constantly looking for new ways to entertain your children that don't deplete their college savings or brain cell levels. So you avoid PlayStation, too much television and Disney on Ice and look for more local, cheap activities. Parks are de rigueur, but with two mobile kids an open space can often be a lesson in panic and speed. So I look for interesting places with walls or stroller accessibility or cages.

One of my friends takes his sons to Target to ride the escalators. Another makes regular visits to the Berkeley Vivarium to see the snakes and their friends for sale. For a few hot days in September, our hangout was the IKEA cafe, where we could watch the 80 traffic and eat Swedish meatballs before wandering over to the kids’ section. Once there, we'd bounce on beds and check out the bunks with slides, perhaps playing with a few of the wooden toys on display. A good 90 minutes of fun for about $2.09.

With better weather and a desire to avoid Swedish cinnamon rolls and the traffic in the 80/580 maze, we decided to look for fun closer to home. So now our free entertainment is a drainage tunnel in Montclair that we recently realized was part of a scenic trail built on a former rail line. Jackpot.

Now we have a tunnel in which to howl, a bridge to cross and shout down to the passing cars, and wildlife to view through our new telescope.

Today we enjoyed a long hike, acting out entire scenes from The Jungle Book while appreciating the wild squirrels, hawks and occasional passerby. All of this fun was so exhausting that at one point Shawn Joaquin decided the best place to rest was the middle of the path.

While he rested there, a middle-aged woman strolled by with her requisite Yorkie and sun hat. As Shawn Joaquin panted and continued to extol the virtues of HERE, RIGHT HERE and NO, NO MORE WALKING RIGHT NOW PEESE, she began to speak in a singsong voice.

Oh, it's too bad about that little boy that died on the path, sitting in the sun instead of walking with his mother. They'll find his skeleton, his bleached bones, his little white skull, his body picked clean by the animals and say "Oh, if only he had walked with his mother he'd still be alive today."

She then winked conspiratorially at me and moved on.

Oh.
My.
God.

As my mind raced with how to explain this all to Shawn Joaquin, he who is afraid of skeletons and strangers and aisle five at Rite Aid, he shouted at me.

WHAT SHE SAY? WHAT SHE TALKING ABOUT?

I could only mumble something about crazy people and that I didn't understand her myself, and pick him up with the hopes that he would accept a hug and not ask any more questions. We continued our hike, and the moment seemed to pass.

As we reached a part of the trail with steep drop off, Shawn Joaquin looked over the edge.

I not go down there. If I did, I would die and my bones would be there and I would go up, up, up in the sky and you would be sad and cry forever.

While I decided that perhaps we did indeed need to have a conversation about death and what it means and why he will not get a drivers license until he is 30 and why living at home is a GOOD THING, I also yearned for one of our previous hangouts, where no stranger talks to you about anything but how much they enjoy the lingonberry sauce. Tacka guden för IKEA.