*Subtitle: I knew you were messing with me. Finally, something happens!

Wednesday began the same as every other day so far. We slept in, then attempted to do absolutely nothing for as long as possible. Amazingly, The Kid actually slept late that morning. He didn't get up until nearly 10. Girlfriend and I passed the time watching more Lord of The Rings. It was even her idea this time. Like I'd hoped, she was actually getting involved in the story. We finished all of The Two Towers that morning.

Around noon, we packed our bags for the only vacation-like event in our whole vacation. We were off to a hotel and family waterpark place about an hour south of here. Check-in time wasn't until 4 p.m., so we killed time wandering aimlessly around a mall near the hotel.

At a discount bookstore, I finally got around to buying that copy of Christopher Hitchens' "Why Orwell Matters." I'll probably never read it, but it looks nice on my bookshelf.

When finally we arrived at the hotel, The Kid saw the waterpark through the giant lobby window and begin doing his best impression of a meth-addled chihuahua with a bladder problem. It simply was not possible to move fast enough in his quest to get into his swim trunks and start playing.

We checked-in, got our wrist bands, and found our room. ("Dad, can we go yet?") Then we found the nearest entrance to our room and moved the car closer to that door. ("Hurry, Dad!") Because, of course, we guessed wrong and parked all the way on the other side of the complex. ("Dad, come on!")

We got our bags back to our room and changed into our suits. ("Is it time yet, Dad?") We made the trek down to the water park, and The Kid nearly passed out from the excitement. It was one of those "kid in a candy store" moments. He had no idea what to do first. He ran around like a fool for nearly ten minutes ("Hey, no running! You're gonna fall on your head!"), unable to decide what to do first.

Girlfriend wasn't too thrilled about any of it. She's one of those women who thinks she looks terrible in a swimsuit, i.e., she is a woman. I've tried convincing her she's wrong, but that's just not going to happen. Ever. So she spent most of her time submerged to her neck in the whirlpool off in the corner.

Which left me to follow The Kid as he gleefully zoomed from one play area to another. The whole thing would have been excruciatingly dull for me if not for one thing: soccermoms. Oh, sweet Jesus, the soccermoms. They were everywhere, and in various states of undress.

"Ooh, look at that one. She's workin' that bikini. Yeah, that's right, jump up and down with the kids. You know how I like it. What's that noise? Is someone coughing?"   "Whoa, sorry Kid. Didn't see you drowning there. Try to be more careful, ok little man?"   "Now where was I? Hey, check out that one over there. Oh my God, she's playing with one of the pull chain shower thingies…"

After a few hours of frolicking, we went back to our room to dry off and dress for dinner. Nearly everyone else would do the same thing: walk back to their rooms fresh from the water. So seeing all those soccermoms wrapped in towels walking through the hallways made me think of a lot of alternate definitions for the term "room service."

Anyway… we dried, dressed, and went to a ribs restaurant. I was so disappointed that we couldn't get The Kid to order ribs. I was all atwitter at the thought of seeing him with BBQ sauce hanging everyplace from his ears to his eyebrows. But unfortunately, he just wasn't playing my game. He chose a mini cheese pizza. Bummer.

After dessert it was back to the hotel. This time The Kid was all charged up about the wallet-draining arcade the fine people at the hotel saw fit to place right next to the only entrance to the waterpark.

Being even less interested in video games than waterslides, Girlfriend stayed in our room to curl up with a book while I took The Kid to waste vast amounts of money. (I've you've never read The Hot Librarian, now is an excellent time to check out her Chuck E. Cheese vs. The Hot Librarian post. It's a similar experience, only hers has liquor, Eriq La Salle, and is generally much funnier.)

Before leaving home, we stopped by the bank to cash in The Kid's piggy bank. He had a whopping $17.11 in his pocket. We started out by getting five dollars in tokens: $3 of his money and $2 of mine. Again, he ran around like a fool trying to decide which game he'd play first. He burned through the five dollars in minutes and was back to begging for more money. We played a bit of a game with this whole thing, one I knew he'd end up losing.

"Kid, you can spend as much of your money as you want. It's your money."

"I want to spend it all, Dad!"

"You can do that if you want, but remember we're going shopping tomorrow. If you spend all your money now, you won't be able to buy anything tomorrow."

"Oh. I want to buy stuff tomorrow, too."

"So much money do you want to spend now?"

"I want to spend it all, Dad!"

We went back and forth like this, two and three dollars at a time, until he'd burned through all seventeen of his dollars and ten of mine too. These arcade machines are all fitted to dispense tickets at the end of a game, so when the money dried up we went to cash them all in and choose prizes.

The Kid had his eye on a 10-inch plush Lisa Simpson for 800 tickets. After 90 minutes and 27 dollars, we had 415 tickets. The Kid ended up settling for a hacky sack, a plastic matchbox car, an eraser, and a Tootsie Roll.

He took that particular disappointment better than I might have expected. He was probably still on something of a video game high. On the way back to our room to sleep he asked, "Can we go again tomorrow, Dad?"

"Sure… you can spend the rest of your money anyway you want."

"How much do I have left?"

"Eleven cents."

"How many games can I get with that?"

"None."

Pause. "Dad, that wasn't very nice."