A Teaching Moment That I Could Have Done Without

My husband is a barbecue caterer and because this is the weekend of the county fair, he is set up in the parking lot of a local bar selling ribs and tri-tip sandwiches. For some reason our fair draws a lot of bikers, and this bar in particular is a popular hang out for them. Mike usually sells out when he barbecues there.

Mike asked if we would like to come up and have lunch while he barbecued today. The girls always love to come visit dad while he's working. They feel privileged to be able to go 'behind the scenes', so to speak, and mess around near the barbecue equipment.

We were sitting away from the rest of the crowd, not only so we could visit with daddy, but so the girls didn't have to be exposed to the harsh language coming from the general population of bikers near the picnic tables. We were sitting next to the dunk tank however, and got to watch some good natured rivalry between some local guys as they tried to throw the soft balls at the target and dunk one guy in particular who was sitting on the seat egging them on.

Well that all changed when one of the biker women volunteered to become the dunkee and promptly took her shirt off. I told the girls, "Don't look", although they had already seen it all, and we made a hasty exit. Unfortunately the only way out was right through the center of the gathering crowd of men and the dunk tank itself.

I then got to spend the next 45 minutes fielding questions of why the woman had done that in front of all the men, and why the men were trying to take pictures, and did I think she got dunked, and did she put her top back on? This is not a lesson my girls needed to learn today, but I did my best to explain why some people have a lack of self respect, and a desire for the attention of men. Yikes.

So thanks a lot lady. You know if you want to pull a stunt like that after hours, that's your business, but to do it in broad daylight with two little girls sitting not 20 feet away was completely uncalled for. Sheesh. Shelby pretty much summed it up when she said, "That was really not appropriate."

And next year? Daddy can bring us home some left overs.