The boys and I have always loved riding on trains. Big trains, little trains. . . it doesn’t matter. We even ride the little kiddie trains at malls and festivals and things.<\/p>\n
Or we used to. Once the kids grew to be big enough to be safe, I was no longer welcome on the little trains. Initially, my kids were outraged by this clear discrimination against adults, but I explained that the trains were for kids.<\/p>\n
Then my oldest son started getting too big to ride.<\/p>\n
That was a serious bummer. At the time, he clearly still wanted to ride, even saying things like “I don’t care what other people think.”<\/p>\n
It didn’t matter. He was bigger than the maximum height bar. Not all train rides have one, but most do.<\/p>\n
This past weekend, we discovered a little park with a Merry Go Round and a train. We immediately got in line for the train, and the kids started trying to convince me that I could ride.<\/p>\n
Then we spotted the dreaded maximum height bar.<\/p>\n
My oldest son’s shoulders slumped. “That’s it. I’m out, too. You go.”<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to ride by myself,” his little brother said.<\/p>\n
“There’s nothing we can do,” I said. “Just like there are some rides you’re too short to ride, we’re too tall to ride on this one.”<\/p>\n
“Actually,” my oldest said, “are you sure you’re short enough?”<\/p>\n
We checked, and he was just barely short enough, less than a quarter inch beneath the bar.<\/p>\n
“Better go,” his older brother said. “This could be your last chance.”<\/p>\n
“Until you have little kids of your own,” I added.<\/p>\n
“Nah…” He looked back at the train, uncertain. “It’s no fun by myself.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As far as life milestones go, I realize that this isn’t a particularly big one. . . It still was sad, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-CK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}