Angela Dove: Award-Winning Writer

You'd think the drama at a playground would only involve children. But on this particular day, the grown-ups wanted in on the action.

     One day last week I took the kids to the playground.  As a mom trapped in the throes of summer vacation, I get my kids outside every morning so that the house is still habitable later that evening. Less mess = less stress. 

     By 10am the place was packed. I recognized other moms, grandmas, and nannies, either by sight or by mutually shared sanity planning (see above).  I exchanged hellos with those who were not reading or texting or, in the case of one harried grandmother, praying for patience. (“Lord, I love little Timmy, but if he attacks my cat with a Power Ranger one more time . . . “)

     “Push me, Mom!” my son called from the swings. I wandered over to him, passing a young couple on a nearby bench. The man smiled at me while the woman kept watch on a three year old boy over by the sandbox.

     “OK,” I said to my son. “Hold on.”

     I was maybe on my fourth push when I heard the young man exclaim, “Four months? Really? Wow!”

     I glanced over to see the man embrace his companion, and noticed the little protrusion from the woman’s belly. There are women who can go through a lot of their pregnancy without showing. Not me. By my second pregnancy, at 4 months along I looked like I was trying to smuggle cantaloupe.

     My son called my attention back to him with a request to “Push me high to the clouds!” I laughed and pushed the swing higher, ruminating on my own pregnancies until the young man jumped up from the playground bench shouting, “Who’s the father?”

      The woman sat on the bench looking at the ground while the man stood over her, red faced. 

     Oh, boy.

     There was mumbling from the woman, and the man threw his hands up into the air. “Jason?! Jason?!”

     I grabbed my son’s swing to slow it down. “Hey,” I said with feigned enthusiasm, “Let’s go play with Sis over on the monkey bars!”

     “No! I wanna swing!”

     “You’ve been seeing Jason?!  How long?”

     I dragged my son across the playground and well away from the drama unfolding by the swings. Why on earth had the woman decided to lower the bomb on her . . . whoever he was right here at the playground? It was like the world’s least appropriate street theater. Why not go ahead and throw some curtains up on either side of the bench? Maybe get some guy with a hand-crank organ? Gather round, boys and girls, for our exciting production of “Who’s Your Daddy?”

     I played with my kids on the far side of the playground, hoping the couple would take their show on the road. About twenty minutes later, my daughter decided it was her turn on the swings. I peered over toward the bench and noticed it was empty. I felt a flood of relief that stuck around just long enough for both of my kids to get situated on the swing set, at which point the little 3-year-old boy ran across my line of sight.

     “Watch out for the swings, Donnie!” The woman’s voice came from the picnic shelter by the playground. I looked over and saw the young mother was now with two men: the guy from before, and a second man who was a larger version of little Donnie.  Ahh. This play was in fact part of a long-running soap opera.

     In between pushing my kids “to the clouds,” I kept an eye on the threesome, making sure my cell phone was at the ready lest this episode become Smackdown at the Playground. However, the drama never progressed beyond heated talking by the men and peacemaking by the female. When I left with my children a few minutes later, the original couple was standing a few yards away from the second man. I heard the young mother say, “Yes, of course Little Donnie is yours. I’m almost sure of it.”

     On the way home, my daughter asked, “Mom, what did you mean when we were getting in the car? You said, ‘Poor shmuck.’”

     “I was talking about street performers, honey.”

     “Oh. OK.”

Angela Dove is an award winning columnist and author of the true crime memoir, No Room for Doubt. She welcomes feedback at www.AngelaDove.com.