Bounce On Out Of Here
I’m at a city park with my kids, and we’ve been to this park a bunch. There is this one spot where there is a rocky hill, all tree-covered. Nice and shady on a hot day. There is a playground and a pavilion at the top of the hill. We get up there and I immediately notice loud noises and I’m having to step over cables and extension cords.
You see, someone rented the pavilion and set up not one, but three, bounce houses around it. Great. So I have to give the disappointing news to my kids that even though they are surrounded by bounce houses, they cannot play in them since this is a private party, but they are free to go hit the playground. Everyone is cool. I sit on a bench as my kids go to town on the fake pirate ship when I hear “Hey!”
That’s when this father, doing his best to imitate The Situation from Jersey Shore, walks up to me and informs me that the entire playground is closed for a “private party”. I look at him and inform him that the public park does not close for “private parties” and it sounds like he rented the pavilion nearby which is fine, but doesn’t give him exclusive use of the neighboring playground.
He storms off and returns with a rental agreement and shoves it in my face. telling me to get my kids and leave. Right, so the rental agreement is very clearly for the pavilion. All for the grand sum of $35 for four hours. How could any sensible adult think that $35 granted you exclusive use of a public playground? Moreover, why is it so important for you to HAVE exclusive use of a public playground?
I, again, point out to him that he rented the pavilion, not the park, and my kids won’t go on his bounce houses and we won’t go into his pavilion, but the playground is fair game for everyone. He begins hurling threats and I’m weighing just taking my kids and leaving to avoid this jerk. Then I decide I need to take a stand on principle. So I tell him to screw off and proceed to use my phone to find the phone number for the park office.
Our county staffs our parks. During the summer months, they employ park rangers who have peace officer authority. I call the park ranger and tell him that there is trouble up at this shady playground and they need to come right away. Sure enough, as I’m getting off of the phone, Dolph returns with two of his meathead friends to tell me that they are ejecting me from the park.
No, you’re not. And if you touch me, I’m calling the authorities and pressing charges. No anger, no rage. With this promise of action, however, one of them kind of widens his eyes and steps back, saying to his friend, “Just leave them alone, man”. This guy, for some reason, does NOT want the authorities coming down on him and it is very obvious.
The ringleader won’t back down, however, and tries his best to get in my face, scream and yell. He grabs my arm, I remove his hand. All of this happens just as I see the ranger pull up, and he yells for everyone to step back from one another and come over. This smug dingus shoves the rental contract into the chest of the ranger.
He starts telling him that I’m “trespassing” and he rented this space for the day for his kid’s party. Now, normally I don’t like posturing by law enforcement, but here it was pretty amusing. Ranger: “Touch me again and I’m detaining you”. -reads contract- “This is for renting the pavilion, you have use of the pavilion but the playground is open for public use”. -hands it back- “Also, your permit doesn’t allow you to set up bounce houses. Where did you plug these in?”
Ranger follows the extension cords and sees that they ran them to the nearby public bathrooms. There was an outdoor outlet. It was locked. This dude cut the lock off so he could plug in his stuff. Ranger comes back with the broken lock. “Did you cut this lock?” “Uhhh…it was like that when I found it”. “Really? Because it was intact this morning. So some random person cut this lock and you just happened upon it within the last two hours?”
“Uhhh….I guess…” Long story short, he let them stay and let them keep the bounce castles because he didn’t want to ruin a kid’s party. He wrote the guy a citation for the broken lock and the unauthorized power use and banned him from the park for the remainder of the season (after the party). Amazingly, this entire event was lost on my children who barely noticed anything was going on, likely because of the compressor noise.