My son’s brush with the law!

My sons and I spent two full days exploring the Smithsonian Institues museums and the Capitol building of Washington DC. All these wonderful museums are FREE! OK, not totally free, they’re spending our tax dollars on these treasures (one of the only reasons I smile when I get the bill from the tax man) and this includes all these great escalators in each building. Escalators to children are TOYS, great places for them to get exercise running up the wrong way, to challenge themselves on how long they can hold onto the side without letting go as they travel down , to Olympic Challenge-how many steps can you take at one time while traveling down. See? A child I’m sure created escalators because they are TOO MUCH fun!

Enter the law, these are the grinches of the season that want to keep our children safe (really?) so in order to keep my son out of the slammer, I kept telling him that control on the escalator was free along with a great lookout (just kidding) so I spent two days saying, “Don’t do that” and “Walk the escalator” and “You’ll get caught.” Did he listen to me?

The last day at the Air And Space Museum I traveled down the escalator and waited for the boys and their friend. After what felt like a HOUR with me wondering “Where in the hell are they” finally I see one boy coming down the escalator, behaving surprisingly VERY WELL! He’s followed by my sons, one with a sucked on a tree full of lemons look on his face as he points to my youngest child who has the deer in the headlight look. They look at me then get off the escalator, and walk over and travel back up.

After another 10 minutes, they come back down and walk over to me, the youngest looking at the ceiling rather than looking me in the eye.

“MAX, got caught running up the escalator….” My oldest grumbles.

“Yeah, the guy made us ride in down the right way,” his cousin adds.

“Sorry, Mommy” my youngest whispers.

“He said that he could take us in, that we could cut our toe off playing on the escalator,” Wolf adds.

I look up and there’s a vinegar faced guard staring at me like really Lady, I can try to make them safe but be a parent please, so I mouth up, “I told him so.” Tis the season to be a kid again, just not when it comes to escalators, just ask Max, his new name is DeEscalator – he says he only wants to take the stairs now.