Father's Daze

It only takes a little time at the fair to prove that, even at two years old, cousins can be very different.

A few years back, we spent a night at the Sheboygan County Fair with our oldest grandson, Ty, when he was just a little less than two years old.

This year, we repeated that experience with our middle grandson, Aiden, who just turned two four months ago. The differences were illuminating, to say the least.

With Ty, we didn’t have to spend any money on rides. His favorite part of the fair was the tractor and farm implement displays. He spent hours climbing all over the tractors, combines and the rest, pretending to drive them. It was, by far, the cheapest fair date we’ve ever had.

Saturday night we got to spend some time with Aiden and his parents at the fair, but we didn’t even get to the farm implements.

That’s because we had to walk through the kiddie ride section of the grounds and Aiden got no further than that.

He had Mee-Mee and Poppie there as well as his parents, so that meant we each got one ride with him. His dad took him down the fun slide, then he went on the alien space ride with his mom.

We think he chose that one because he got to ride inside what looked like the alien toys from “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2,” two movies which he watched often enough to have memorized while he was at our house.

Then it was my turn, and Aiden chose the teacup ride. I’m not sure if there was some kind of message he was trying to deliver with that selection, but it proved to be pretty much my cup of tea — and yes, pun intended.

We sat in a giant teacup that we could spin around as the circle of teacups went around. Aiden had no objection as I spun us around and around.

It wasn’t until after we had finished the ride that Aiden’s parents — whom we’d met in the children’s ride area — told us that Aiden had partaken of another fair delight before we met up. He apparently had gobbled up an entire quarter-pound hot dog, bun and all, before hitting the kiddie rides.

Had I known that before embarking on the teacup ride, I probably would have taken it a lot easier on the spinning, but fortunately there were no untoward incidents.

At that point, Aiden decided he wanted to go on the merry-go-round with cars, trucks and motorcycles — no surprise, given his fondness for all things vehicular.

He had to go on that ride alone, since we adults were too big to accompany him, but that didn’t seem to bother him in the least.

Aiden did, however, ride around in his car — which he had to himself — with one hand on the steering wheel and the other over one eye. We’re just hoping that’s not how he plans to drive another decade and a half or so down the road.

The only explanation we could come up with was that he thought he was a pirate and he was driving a pirate caaarrrgh — yes, pun intended again.

Aiden had enough tickets left for one ride, and Mee-Mee was the only one left who hadn’t gone on a ride with him. Aiden decided he wanted to go on the fun slide again.

That meant Mee-Mee had to climb about five-dozen steps with him, figure out how to get the two of them on the rug and then slide back down again — all in one piece.

Next year, Mee-Mee will be smart enough to pick out her ride with her grandson before Poppie. And then Poppie will introduce Aiden to the wonderful world of tractors and farm implements.