Old, judgmental people attend local theme park, praise merits of hand sanitizer

Each August, Paddy's work hosts a Lagoon Day. It's pretty great, because otherwise I'm not sure where I'd fill that compulsive need to dress the family up in matching t-shirts and spend an evening carefully shielding my children from viewing an abhorrent amount of teenage PDA.

As I rapidly approach the ripe old age of 30, it seems I am out of touch with current teenage norms. When I was a teenager, see, articles of clothing that were entirely sheer, mesh, made of netting, or otherwise classified as transparent were not considered sufficient to cover ones undergarments, no matter how brightly colored or well-adorned with sequins said underwear might have been. If Lagoon represents an accurate cross-section of society, this has apparently changed. 

Things that are also now true at Lagoon (and possibly the rest of the world):

* Bubble gum is no longer relegated to the mouth or the garbage can only. No, no-- jamming it into painted metal fencing at eye-height is actually encouraged!

* One need not be inconvenienced by the terrible hassle that applying deodorant before going out into public presents.

* Is your text-based conversation incredibly urgent? Awesome! It's fine if your children push, shove, and holler at the top of their lungs while in line next to other children, so long as you don't have to look up from the screen of your super fancy smart phone and the obviously riveting conversation your thumbs are having with... someone who isn't here. 

My penchant for judging my fellow theme park patrons notwithstanding, we actually had a fantastic time watching Bug ride on various animal- or vehicle-themed rides. 

Even Mr. Baggins got in on the action on a few particularly slow rides.

The weather was great, the kids were surprisingly well-behaved and brave, and every single one of us had a blast.

Thanks to the reasonably affordable bounce back option, Schmoops and I actually headed back about a week later on a date night sans kids. I don't even remember the last time I rode Colossus, but even all these years later, it's pretty awesome. We opted not to wear our matching shirts on the return trip, though. 

Instead, I decided to wear a neon yellow spike-studded bra with an oversized sheer white tank top over it and booty shorts. You know, when in Rome.