Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Sun, Fun, and Frog Children

The phone in our hotel suite rang promptly at a quarter to eight. In the morning.

"Good MORNING, Mrs. M-----! Just a COURTESY CALL for you this morning. Enjoying your STAY here in SUNNY Orlando? Great, great."

I could hear the large toothy smile. And the upcoming sales pitch.

"This your last day with us here? Great, great. Wondering if you might be able to fit us in this morning for a COMPLIMENTARY BREAKFAST, give us a chance to tell you how EXCITED we are about the TIMESHARE and PURCHASING opportunities here at the Resort. We are INCREASING the thank you gift today to ONE HUNDRED TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS per family..."

...Before committing to an hour and a half of high pressure sales, cold bagels and warm fruit, I went over the last few days of our wonderful vacation. And it was wonderful.

Except for the Frog Children. (I'll explain in a minute.)

Day one:

My daughters and I discover the playground of the resort complex, right next to the beautiful pool area. They are exploring the multicolored play structure and digging in the white sand, both structure and sand gleaming in the early morning sun.

At some point a toddler and his mother arrive. The little boy is dressed smartly in a blue and green plaid short set. His feet are new to hard-soled shoes and independent ambulation. He is walking cautiously, each step in the shifting sand an accomplishment and a wonder. Without prompting, my daughters tone down their play in the presence of this younger newcomer. To reinforce the behavior, I tell them what a good job they are doing, being careful of the little boy.

Play continues, only slightly subdued.

Then all of a sudden comes four older kids to the playground, a girl of maybe 13, another girl who was maybe 11, a boy of about 10, and the youngest, a girl of about 6--all displaying a strong resemblance to each other. These children could have been advertisements for Florida vacations: fashionably dressed in child versions of adult leisure clothes, skin glowing warmly tanned, blond hair naturally highlighted by the sun, feet bare.

I said these children "came"--It'd be more exact to say they "hit," as a hurricane does.

Bypassing the entrance gate, they jumped the low fence encircling the play area. They ran up the slides from the bottom. They walked across the tops of the monkey bars. They upended toy buckets abandonned in the sand. All in the space of five minutes.

They were in constant arbitrary motion. They ran, kicking up sand shoulder high as they went, hooping and hollering as if my five year olds and the tentatively-walking toddler were not even there.

Eventually the little toddler was rescued by his mother. Also, my kids soon decided they would rather go see if their Daddy and uncles were ready to leave for the Magic Kingdom. On our way out of the play area, the toddler's mother asked me hopefully, "Are you Owners here?" She seemed to deflate a little when I said no, so I added that we might go to one of the sales meetings.

"Oh, we just came from there. It sounded really interesting." She glances at the four children still on the playground, now jumping off of the 6-foot high platform meant to help children reach out to slide down the firefighter's pole. "I was hoping to talk to some of the Owners..."

Day Two:

My daughters and I are again at the playground, followig a full day at Discovery Cove swimming with sting rays and feeding tropical birds and building sand castles on the man-made beach. This time the four children from the day before are already there. Apparently they have captured live frogs, and are busy alternately burying them in huge mounds of sand and unearthing them--each time exclaiming with glee that the creatures are still alive.

They soon discover a new game: Carrying the frogs to the top of the slide two at a time, giving them a flick with a fingertip, then watching happily as the frogs go bouncing down the slide into the sand. Before the frogs can escape, the children slide down after them, scoop them up, and take them up for another go.

At this point I stand up ready to scold these children. But just as I am about to speak, a group of four adults who are preparing a grill for barbeque right next to the play area look up and laugh. "Found some frogs, did you?" says a man. "Well, will you look at that!"

"Dad, watch this," the boy says. On cue, the youngest girl takes a frog to the top of the slide and gives it a flick. The man laughs and says, "Don't hurt the frogs, OK?"

"OK?" I think. Just tell them to stop!

But the parents and their friends go back to their conversation. The father lights the charcoal, then a cigarette.

At this point I give my daughters a five-minutes-til-we-leave alert.

The little boy then comes over to one of my daughters, frog enclosed in his hand behind his back. Looking at me, smiling, he places the frog in the hood of her dress and places the hood over her head. My daughter laughs, saying it tickles, seeming to be pleased that this big kid is no longer ignoring her...thinking he just wants to play with her.

Apparently not the reaction the boy was hoping for. He takes the frog out, then puts it back in. This time she is not aware what he has done. She walks over to me to ask a question. The boy follows.

I look at the boy and as sternly as I have ever spoken to a child before I say, "Take the frog out. Now."

He says, "No." Then he dares, "You do it."

I calmy reach into my daughter's hood, gently remove the frog, and hold it out to him.

Quietly but still very stern--bordering on threatening, I say "And do not put it in there again."

Again. Not the reaction he was hoping for. For a moment I was sure he was going to say something else. But he just ran away. For a moment I was sure he'd run over to the far fence and tell on me to his parents. But he just climbed to the top of the slide andd gave the frog an extra vigorous finger-flick bounce down the incline.

I collected my girls and we left.

Day Three:

This day we just hang out poolside. The resort staff has planned a full day of activities for kids of all ages. My little brother is excited about participating in the cannonball splash contest and lines up to be one of the contestants.

Of course, who should cut into line in front of everyone but the Frog Boy. He is chided by the 20-something woman in charge of this activity. The Frog Boy runs to the end of the line, then back to the front. The young woman chides him again, this time failing to remove her mouth from the cordless mic. Her exasperation reverberates throughout the pool area. She knows him by name.

Throughout the contest the Frog Boy continues to alternately cut in front of children waiting to take their turn jumping and run away from the activity director.

No adult steps forward to claim the child or to help.

Later my stepmother and I take the girls over to do the beaded jewelry craft activity. The two younger Frog Girls are there, already constructing their necklaces. My kids sit down, at which point the older of the two Frog Children looks up and says to us, "You have to pay for this."

"We know. We will," says my stepmother.

The Frog Boy is also there, running behind the activity rental desk pulling floatation toys from the shelves. Another 20-something woman tells him repeatedly to stopputthatbackgositdownImeanit. She calls him by name.

My stepmother ventures, "Oh, is this your little one?"

Quickly--too quickly--the woman says, "Oh, nonono." Then she gathers herself and adds more calmly, "Oh, I love kids, I love 'em to death, but no, I don't have any right now."

On our way back to the pool, plastic beaded trinkets complete, we pass a sales rep in the midst of a tour and pitch. "And as you can see," she says to the couple, pointing to the Frog Girls working on their third necklace, "there are plenty of ACTIVITIES for the KIDS. Most of the OWNERS feel pretty comfortable letting the kids do their own thing while the adults do theirs. This is, of course, a GATED COMMUNITY so it is QUITE SAFE..."

Last Day:

"...And, Mrs. M-----, as you probably noticed walking around the property we are currently constructing FOUR NEW UNITS. Two are ALREADY COMPLETELY SOLD OUT, but there are STILL OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE for the other two, plus FIVE OTHER UNITS being planned and slated to be complete by 2009..."

Fast foreward, four years...

The Frog Children (whose parents, I assume by now, are Owners) are teens and pre-teens. The older ones now come to the property without their parents on their spring breaks and summer vacations. The Frog Boy has graduated from palming plastic beach balls behind the activity counter to palming the behinds of the 20-something activity directors. The middle Frog Girl knows by name, occupation, and date of purchase every Owner in the resort, and can smell a non-owning tourist a mile away. The Frog Children have lined the coordinated mauve-taupe-and-sand walls of their unit with heavy plastic and run a thriving meth lab from the fully outfitted modern kitchen.

Groundskeepers report in vain that the duck and frog population on the property has been steadily declining...

I cut the phone voice off, mid-pitch. "No. No thank you. We have to be at the airport by noon, so we really don't have time. But thank you anyway. We have had a marvelous stay."

Posted by perry032 at April 8, 2005 11:20 AM | TrackBack
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