Dragon Park on a Sunday Afternoon

At the Dragon Park near Vandy, the sky was a distant, sweet, deep bruise. The taunt of a thunderstorm that never came made everything more perfect. The sun danced on my shoulders, warmed them through my thin tee shirt. The Boy’s head damp with the sweat of young activity. His running, climbing person a thing to behold. Upon arriving, I had failed miserably at parallel parking the Jeep—a task at which I normally excel. I abandoned the effort and parked further up the street. The old me would’ve been embarrassed having put on such a display for the parkgoers casually lounging on blankets and looking at the road. The me of the past few years—the near middle-aged me—couldn’t have cared less. There’s no shame in foolishness—only in being a fool.

The Dragon Park often strikes me of an awkwardly defined Bohemia—its visitors equal parts ugly and pretty. The children perfect and then filthy. The over-attentive parents as nauseating as the ones who appear unaware that they even have children. It is wonderful—truly—and I wonder that we don’t go more often.

On one wall of the concrete tunnel that runs through the center of the rock-climbing hill (an impressive draw of the park), someone had crudely drawn a penis and added some equally brilliant text. On his third pass through the tunnel, the Boy fixed on the image, studied it with curiosity bordering on appreciation. I was irritated at the image. Primarily, because the tunnel caters to the younger boys and girls at the park. Their audience seemed to me unnecessary. As was the image itself. I encouraged the Boy out of the tunnel and helped re-focus his attention.

I wondered briefly if the congregation of young, pale, and shirtless skater kids in a far corner of the park had drawn the dick, laughing to themselves at how cool they’d been. What is adolescence if not the ability to entertain oneself with all things phallic? I likely did the same some 25-30 years ago when I too was a skater punk. I certainly do the same thing now.

It occurred to me then. Who was I to make the stereotypical assumption that these wayward kids were the guilty ones? Why not a Vandy professor with a thing for tunnels? Or a yuppie taking a break from his cell phone and privileged toddler soaking up the day in her Maclaren stroller? And just as I wondered why I cared, I ceased to.

And so Em ran the Good Run, climbed the Good Climb, reveled in being a child on a warm gift of Sunday afternoon. I got to watch. I got to feel the sun on my face. I got to mingle in Bohemia and distance myself at once, wondering just where I fit in.

And the skater kids I’d blamed for the graffiti zipped noisily down the cement paths on wheeled boards, stopped, grouped to the side, and smiled and laughed and enjoyed the all too rare good days of adolescence. They seemed unfazed by the world, its rules, and its assumptions.

And I was glad for them.