When you’re the parent of a small child in a city you spend a lot of free time in parks. Kids need the outdoors just like dogs. It’s a double edged sword. On one hand, the positive, you end up getting lots of sun. On the other hand, the negative, it gets reeeeeeeal boring following a young one around for one, two, sometimes more hours. You’ve got to be vigilant. There’s a lot of sickos out there. You can’t just zone out on your phone. In the time it takes to send one or two texts your kid can be halfway across the park, approaching a busy street, or grabbing some kid’s toy and smashing them over the head with it, or snatched by some wacko and thrown into a shabby van with no windows.

For some time now I’ve thought these children’s parks should have bars attached to them. I look around and see the other exhausted parents. There would need to be some rules, of course. No giving drinks out to the homeless, or to the children. An opening time of noon or so. It would certainly help spark better conversations and get people to be more social, including myself. I don’t really talk to the other parents much, I mean, during the weekdays it’s just me and the nannies who stick to their own clicks. The real parents appear on the weekends. Still, it’d be good to set up play dates, I guess. Find other dads to drink beer with.

Douglas Park is located on Wilshire and 25. We call it “bum park” due to, you guessed it, the prevalence of homeless hanging out there. Insensitive? Maybe. Reality? For sure. They’re harmless but stinky and depressing. I think the real reason they irk me is because I wonder where the hell all my tax dollars end up. Oh wait, I do know where they end up–building bombs, making tanks, planes, weapons of war. Anyway, this isn’t a political blog.

It’s a beautiful park. Lots of big trees. A duck pond with some of the most disgusting, green tinged, gross, bacteria filled water I’ve ever seen. Some little streams here and there. It’s the size of one city block. Not much, but great in a pinch when I don’t feel like driving to a larger park further away. Ok, I’ll insert another gripe here. There’s very few large recreational in LA but lots of damned golf courses with high fences around them everywhere. Yes, Malcolm Gladwell and I both agree there’s an imbalance. Exit grievance.

Enter the magic of the fruit stand. No booze but all the same flavors. A selection of tropical delights to give myself some hydration as well as a digression and a distraction from the boredom of the park. A flash of intense colors in an otherwise gloomy day. A tasty snack to enjoy as my life whittles away while the kiddo goes down the same slide hundreds of times in a row. Wheeeee!

I went with a strange combo of mango, pineapple, and coconut. Double fresh squeezed lime juice, lots of tajin, and a “mas” portion of chamoy. The guy kept pushing his shady looking watermelon on me. No way. dude. Eight bucks for a big cup full. It really got me thinking. Man, this would make a great cocktail. The wheels turned as I chomped through the underripe fruit. Stone fruit season is around the corner. Chamoy is made with apricots. Could I make some with booze in it and then throw it on top of a drink? Would it work or just ooze unattractively to the bottom of the glass? Shit, getting it to float would be tough unless it was bonded to oil somehow and then it would be really odd. Oh well.

Yes, parenthood is a strange mixture of misery and joy. Anyone honest will tell you that. It’s imbalanced, of course, like me on one side of the see-saw. Most times 70% joy and 30% misery which slides down to 60-40 when you’ve slept two hours and can go as high as 80-20 on the days when your toddler isn’t being a total asshole. In the end, if you’re lucky, they’ll take care of you when you’re shitting your pants and find you a nice home to live out your remaining years so you don’t burden them anymore. Procreation!