Apple Picking - Present Day Tom Sawyer-ing

Dear Little Ones,

You will have to work all of your life. At first, you will work to grow up and be able to poop outside of your pants, then work to get smarter and get through (at least 16 years of) school, and finally you will work to make a living. You should always work to live, and not the other way around. It has never made sense to me to pay somebody else to do their work for them, which is why I have always resisted one of your Mom's longest-running requests: to go apple picking.
 

This past weekend she finally drug me out to Eckert's Orchard, where we paid those nice people to drive us out into an orchard, drop us off, and pick their apples for them to sell to us, like those suckers in Tom Sawyer. Disclaimer: I did get paid to pick peaches and apples at an orchard in high school, so I may be a little biased. I had flashbacks to those hot days in high school, standing on a ladder and pruning and picking peaches, and wondered why this would be fun.

Just as I was about to start rip down every apple in sight, and throw them into the bag faster than a kid running through a dark basement right after watching a scary movie, I started to hear that familiar giggle from Marshall. You can take any good temper tantrum I am getting ready to throw, and: First - make me feel like an idiot for stomping around like a gorilla who can't find any bananas, and Second - completely ruin the tantrum by laughing, because then I start laughing, so then you start laughing harder, so I start laughing harder, and then.....well, 15 minutes have gone by and who knows why I was even mad, or even why we started laughing in the first place.

As we wondered through the narrow rows of the trees and among the smell of hundreds of apples (some rotting), I would dare to say we had even more fun picking apples than actually eating them. This could be because eating an apple for you would be like me trying open my mouth wide enough to get a good bite out of a watermelon. Then, once you got a bite, a sour face usually followed, with the apple then getting either spit out, chewed then spit out, or eventually eaten, followed by you waiting with your mouth open, as wide as you could get it, for anther bite, like some kind of hungry hippo.

Needless to say, I was having a good time. I guess you, and nature, started to sense this, because you started trying to climb back onto the wagon that dumped us in the orchard, and your Mom had gone 15 minutes without peeing, so it was time to head back. I have ridden on wagons pulled by tractors before, but riding with a laughing/squealing baby was like seeing a movie on IMAX instead of at the theaters. The ride was way more fun, and I couldn't help but notice the sun setting, the orchard left behind, the perfect cool fall weather, and you and your Mom sitting and laughing.

After the hard night's work, we headed back to the playgrounds, and proceeded to have more fun. At first we watched pigs race, and that's just a good time that speaks for itself. (Piggy Azalea was a heck of a racer). We went on the not-so-haunted Haunted Hay Ride, which just gave us more tractor time. We also rode around in those spinny-apple-carnival ride things. I tried to take it easy, and then you grabbed that wheel in the middle and started spinning us harder. Somehow, I got dizzy and you didn't, so I guess I am the lame old man who can't handle roller coasters now.

We then capped the whole thing off with a ride down the 70+ foot mine-shaft slide. There was nobody in line at it, leaving me to wonder if it was even open to the public.We made our way over, and it was pitched black, so of course we jumped in. We couldn't see anything, and I was way too tall for the slide, so I nearly knocked myself out cold when we started to slide and my forehead smacked off the top. You laughed all the way down, and I used my phone to grab a picture of it. (You had better have been laughing because of the slide, and not because of the newest dent in the slide).

Now I guess I am turning into a mushy, appreciative, photographing, fewer-tantrums-throwing guy, who even enjoys paying other people to do work for them. I guess this is what it's like being your Dad.

So, thanks.

Love,
Dad