My darling daughter, , recently turned eightteen years old. I imagine that this is one of the things that has been making me feel my age lately. I mean, it seems like only a short while ago that I turned 18 and was getting ready to go off to college.
On the other hand, the occasion gave me the impetus to look back on her life and recall a few pretty hilarious episodes.
While she was growing up, Saga had a fear of people in animal costumes. We avoided Disneyland, and having her picture taken with the Easter Bunny at the mall was right out. At events, if we saw one coming, we knew her reaction wouldn't be positive, so we tried to "steer" her away from them.
In the United States, there's a chain of restaurants called "Chuck E. Cheese". They're meant to be a child's paradise - pizza, video games with fabulous prizes, music and lots of grinning yelling pre-teens running around like maniacs. The mascot of this wonderland of food and entertainment is "Chuck E. Cheese" himself, a big smiling mouse wearing a baseball cap, and sporting a perpetually goofy grin.
On the television adverts, the mouse is a cartoon - he looks quite small, actually. At the restaurant, he's a human in a mouse suit, and he's big, particularly in comparison to his clientele'.
When she was about four, we took Saga to a Chuck E. Cheese pizza emporium for some occasion...we recalled that there were animatronic singing animals, but apparently, we'd forgotten about the host.
So there we were, just sitting quietly like a nice little family minding our own business, gnawing on chewy pizza...and failing to notice the stealthy approach of a rather large baseball-cap wearing mouse.
The mouse tapped Saga on the shoulder, and Saga slowly turned in her seat. Her eyes went wide with terror. Who could blame her?
She let out an ear-piercing scream that attracted the attention of everyone in the building. This was the scream to end all screams. It couldn't have been louder or more shrill had Jason been standing behind her with a chainsaw.
"ARRRRHHHHHHHH!" she yelled. "Giant rat! Giant rat!"




.

Proud to be a member of these clubs:






My non-animals account: