Scrofula
On Sunday my daughter and I did the quintessential Seattle thing to do, the thing that no one in Seattle ever actually does: we went up the Space Needle. It was lucky for me that it was foggy out, because going up the elevator with the glass doors, watching the ground drop out from below you, is a seriously freaky thing: you just can start imagining that the dignified, serious-talking old Japanese tourist man in there with you is going to actually flip into some violent PCP freakout and toss himself through the windows, his voice coming up to you on the rushing air as he falls, "You know way to sculpture garden! Yes please thank you!"
We got up there, and Kid wasn't interested in going outside to look at the view, even after the fog wore off. She was so OVER it, once she discerned that we weren't actually in outer space. Instead she started running around playing with all these dumb touch-screen computers that impart valuable Pacific Northwest shopping and sightseeing tips. There was also a little joystick that allowed you to control a camera on the roof, and she sat in front of that thing for a full twenty minutes, even though all you could see was fog and the Christmas lights on the safety rails. Then Santa showed up and she started talking really loudly about how Santa is scary and she hated him, so I decided to take her down a floor to the restaurant.
Now, this restaurant, for those of you that don't know, is on a revolving floor so you can enjoy the full panorama while drinking some sort of overpriced cocktail decorated with saucy-shaped curls of muskmelon. We got expensive food and ate it, all four mandatory courses, slowly twirling. The whole idea enchanted me, although I couldn't eat from the motion sickness and had to bring everything home.
When we got home, I had to prompt Kid: "Tell Dr. what we did today, Kid!" I said. So she told him about the touch screen computers and scary Santa. "No, tell him about lunch! Where did we eat lunch?" "I had pancakes, and bacon, and strawberries, and ice cream," she said. "No! The twirling . Tell him about the twirling restaurant!" I insisted. The thing is, she's not the one that thought it was totally awesome, it was me. The whole experience made me feel like I'd stepped into some campy late-60's film about fast love on the card shark circuit. A revolving restaurant! Sit and spin! And, the horrible thing is, I work fifty feet (horizontally) from that thing. I've been having a rough day, what with my extremities breaking out in some strange, maddeningly itchy rash (did I mention that?) and I had an almost irrepressable urge to pay the entrance fee and the mandatory minimum lunch fee just to sit up there in the clouds, slowly rotating while polishing off a goat cheese quiche. The money is no object: I've discovered I'm greatly comforted by spending money frivolously. Sure, if I were a junkie in the gutter, I wouldn't have to worry about showing up to work every day and whittling away my life one pointless task after another. But, if I were a junkie, I wouldn't have the wherewithal to sit up atop the Space Needle eating apple crisp.
We got up there, and Kid wasn't interested in going outside to look at the view, even after the fog wore off. She was so OVER it, once she discerned that we weren't actually in outer space. Instead she started running around playing with all these dumb touch-screen computers that impart valuable Pacific Northwest shopping and sightseeing tips. There was also a little joystick that allowed you to control a camera on the roof, and she sat in front of that thing for a full twenty minutes, even though all you could see was fog and the Christmas lights on the safety rails. Then Santa showed up and she started talking really loudly about how Santa is scary and she hated him, so I decided to take her down a floor to the restaurant.
Now, this restaurant, for those of you that don't know, is on a revolving floor so you can enjoy the full panorama while drinking some sort of overpriced cocktail decorated with saucy-shaped curls of muskmelon. We got expensive food and ate it, all four mandatory courses, slowly twirling. The whole idea enchanted me, although I couldn't eat from the motion sickness and had to bring everything home.
When we got home, I had to prompt Kid: "Tell Dr. what we did today, Kid!" I said. So she told him about the touch screen computers and scary Santa. "No, tell him about lunch! Where did we eat lunch?" "I had pancakes, and bacon, and strawberries, and ice cream," she said. "No! The twirling . Tell him about the twirling restaurant!" I insisted. The thing is, she's not the one that thought it was totally awesome, it was me. The whole experience made me feel like I'd stepped into some campy late-60's film about fast love on the card shark circuit. A revolving restaurant! Sit and spin! And, the horrible thing is, I work fifty feet (horizontally) from that thing. I've been having a rough day, what with my extremities breaking out in some strange, maddeningly itchy rash (did I mention that?) and I had an almost irrepressable urge to pay the entrance fee and the mandatory minimum lunch fee just to sit up there in the clouds, slowly rotating while polishing off a goat cheese quiche. The money is no object: I've discovered I'm greatly comforted by spending money frivolously. Sure, if I were a junkie in the gutter, I wouldn't have to worry about showing up to work every day and whittling away my life one pointless task after another. But, if I were a junkie, I wouldn't have the wherewithal to sit up atop the Space Needle eating apple crisp.