Where was I?

Where was I? 

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, my mouth immediately watered from the smell of a mixture of onions…. hmmm burgers? Hot dogs?  Wait, I could smell the wonderful aroma of bakery goodies and coffee! 

When you have been intermittently fasting and having protein shakes instead of any goodies…period…the aroma of those particular treats can cause you to be like the guy in a cartoon who lifts off the ground to allow his nose to follow the trail of enticing smells.

I had a little talk with myself and walked a little further.

I opened my eyes and looked around… what struck me was that most of the faces I saw looked… I turned to my daughter and asked her to give me her first impression of the faces she could see around her, and she echoed my thoughts when she answered, stressed. 

To that I add tired and irritated, but rarely did I see a smile, even on the little children!

The next thing that really struck me was that parents who had brought their children to this place to have a happy time were jerking their arms, threatening to spank them, put them in time-out or remove them from this place all together. These threats issued from parents with the veins standing out on their throat and their forehead… just saying that as an adult I feared their faces, and I wondered how the children who were obviously tired and or hungry or both were taking this all in and what their memory of that time would be.

There were some young people walking hand in hand and several big family groups all in matching T-shirts who seemed to be enjoying their time in this place, I was happy to see that.

I could go on and on about all the mixed emotions I felt, I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time at the happy, tired, sad, hungry, hurried, harried, mass of humanity all around me. 

At one point I had been ruminating on all those thoughts and when I looked around me, I could see no one I recognized and I had no idea where I was or where I was supposed to be heading so I just stood still and waited, like a lost child, for one of my family to come and find me!

As I write this as good a time as I had with my family watching my adult children, one adult grandchild and my three-year-old twin grandsons have a good time and enjoy some of the good food they had been telling me about, I am very happy to be home.

Where was I? Can you guess?

I was at the place they call the “Happiest place on earth”

Actually, I am now in the happiest place on earth to me…my own little recliner in my own spacious great room right here in good old Mableton, Ga.