We went to Fantasy of Flight last Father’s Day, and had lots of fun exploring all the planes and exhibits. Towards the end, though, as we were wandering around a large hangar filled with all sorts of planes, I was getting a little hot and tired. So, when we saw a plane painted like a giraffe, I\u00a0 decided to take the ultimate parent cop-out.<\/p>\n
“Hey big guy,” I said to my oldest. “Could you go read the sign for that one and tell me what it is?”<\/p>\n
Each plane had a sign with a couple paragraphs giving details about the plane, along with personal observations from the owner of Fantasy of Flight (at least I think he’s the owner). The signs are fascinating and go a long way towards transforming a bunch of old planes into a bunch of great stories.<\/p>\n
I chatted with my folks as my oldest dutifully ran off to read the sign. We looked at more planes, and then realized that my oldest still hadn’t returned.<\/p>\n
Looking back at the giraffe plane, I saw that a woman had joined him at the sign. She was a classic Florida girl: blonde hair, deep tan, thin white shirt over a brightly colored bikini. My seven-year-old was leaning into her as she read to him.<\/p>\n
My mom hustled over to thank the woman and retrieve the big guy.<\/p>\n
“What were you doing?” I asked as he walked back. “You know how to read.”<\/p>\n
He shrugged.<\/p>\n
“Well, what was the story? What did the sign say?”<\/p>\n
He looked at me blankly. “Sign?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are so many punch lines to this one that I couldn’t decide which to use. Instead, I just left it without any. I’ll let you fill in your own.<\/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":[118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-dy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","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=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}