Pink Eye and the Fourth of July

Instead of joining family in the Brainerd Lakes area this Fourth of July holiday, my wife and I took our sons to the Eagan Fun Fest parade today, my first parade in exactly nineteen years. It wasn't as unenjoyable as I thought it would be. No offense, by the way, to the organizers, participants, or people who like parades. I'm just not the parade type I guess.

I did enjoy watching my 2 1/2-year-old son appearing to enjoy it. He wasn't just interested in the candy, either, which is good, because as we watched from near the finish line, many of the candy throwers had run out. Having your kids enjoy something always makes even the most boring things in life tolerable. I guess that's a large reason why G movies do so well.

The only real downer of the day is that my one-year-old's pink eye is getting worse. (Is that one word or two?) We'll need to take him in soon; we were hoping to be able to at least hold off until tomorrow.

I had fevers, earaches, cavities and chicken pox just like any other kid (pre-chicken pox vaccine days), so it baffles me that my kids have had multiple occurrences of pinkeye (walleye is one word; perhaps pinkeye is too...I can Google it later). I finally did catch it from one of them in my 40s, but never as a child.

While I always enjoyed the Fourth of July as a kid, I never quite caught the Fourth of July Parade Fever. Once every nineteen years is plenty for me, although I'll probably be doing more of them in the future if gas prices don't at least hold steady for a while. I enjoy even parades if they save me $100 at the pump.