You Can't Go Home Again... Unless....

Okay, so as anyone who peruses Nancy's Facebook page knows by now, last week was our great "Brunch Staycation." In between brunches (my favorite Cure album!) we squeezed in a day o' East Bay adventure. Well, mostly it was a day for Nancy to re-connect with a very good friend from bygone days, and to plan their... um... yet-to-be-bygone-but-before-that-happens-even-better days together on both sides of the span.

After their lovely get-together (and yes, I was there, but really more as a happy onlooker than participant; I didn't see the point of wasting what little time they had that morning with bon mots about the bookstore or Chuck) Nancy and I explored Oakland... which, it turns out, sucks way less than I remember. Of course, most of what I remember about Oakland are the late-night trips I'd make with my dad to his Broadway pharmacy to shut off the burglar alarm, so pretty much anything during the day (and not involving drug addicts and fat, bored cops) was bound to be an improvement... but I digress. That's so unlike me.

We made our way to Children's Fairyland, eager to relive our childhood days, and sure the place would be 15-square feet and mostly rusted. I asked Nancy if she remembered Pogo -the world's angriest clown- from her Fairyland visits, and happily she didn't. I say "happily" because I recall the weekend my family went to Fairyland, and I watched Pogo make a little girl cry as he forced her to take a balloon shaped like an Ebola virus. The next day at school I started to tell my fairyland tale, but I couldn't get past "We went to Fairyland yesterday..." before a friend of mine whispered urgently "Pogo wasn't there, was he?" Ahhh, the carefree salad days of youth!

Dammit! Digressed again! What's the matter with me?

So, Nancy and I make it past the geese, and march happily up to the Fairyland entrance and announce "Two please!" to the napping girl trapped in the ticket booth. Before the echo of our footsteps could die in that cool October shade, the girl replies "You can't come in without a child."

What?

She can tell we're confused. She sits up, and looks down toward our waists... seeming to hope for our sake that we either brought a child and forgot, or maybe one had wandered up while we were talking and she could slip us in. No help at waist-level, she repeated: "You have to have a child to come in."

I looked at Nancy; Nancy looked at me. "But we don't have a child," Nancy said.

"Sorry," ticket booth girl sighed, feeling more trapped than ever, I'm sure.

Nancy looked at me; I looked at Nancy. "But... Fairyland...." My voice trailed off as I watched ticket booth girl close the metaphorical shades in her eyes to the glare of my disappointment.

We turned and walked back to the car... only then realizing Nancy should have trumpeted "I'm pregnant! A-HAAAAA!"*

Now, here's the thing: set aside for the moment that now more than ever I'm certain mostly-deserted Fairyland could have used our $16**, being turned away for lack of offspring is the most blatant city-sanctioned discrimination of which I've ever been the victim. Let alone the fact that we're quiet, harmless middle-aged folks who just want to revisit a tiny, squeaky, pastel-colored bit of our pasts, what would happen to someone who tried to practice the reverse of that discrimination? "Oh, I'm sorry, you can't come in to my ice cream shop with kids."

AND, if the argument is that banning the childless somehow keeps the kids safe from creepy strangers, I'd argue the opposite. Children's Fairyland may actually be endangering children by insisting that only those with children may enter. I shudder to think how many childless Fairyland adventurers turn sadly away from the entrance, only to desperately force kids they don't know to enter Fairyland with them, only abandoning them to the geese and this generation's angry Fairyland clown.

I won't even discuss how many unwanted pregnancies Children's Fairyland must cause every year. You can do that math.

Children's Fairyland hates kids.

*She's not; don't email me.
** Magic Keys for their talking Storybook Boxes are an extra $2, bastards.