I'm a carney hero. A legend, if only for a few fleeting moments.
My shining moments took place yesterday at Luna Park in Coney Island, where I won two successive carnival games for my daughter, and thereby winning her undying love for a total of at least five minutes.
First up was the "Frog Bog," a pretty standard carnival game where one uses a mallet to attempt to propel a rubber frog into a rotating pool of makeshift lily pad cup thingies. One of those, you'll never get it games. My daughter scooped up the mallet, and then said (in her six year old baby-talk voice) "Daddy do it," while handing it off to me. Well on my third attempt of three, my mallet struck the target with just enough force- no too hard, like my first go, not too soft like try two- and the rubber frog flung its way into one of those lily pads, immediately eliciting a monster hug and a squeal from my daughter. Feeling pretty good.
Then we walk over to "Stinky Feet," a variation of the classic shoot-the-water-into-the-clown's-mouth-and-pop-the-balloon game. It's another game that no matter how close you are to winning, that ugly kid at the end of the row always somehow winds up with prize. This version involved alternating targets on a cartoon-ish gentleman sitting in a bathtub, his (as we've been led to believe) stinky feet hanging out. The winner brings on the shower over his head. My daughter generally enjoys doing this game on her own, so I was getting her set up. I don't know if it was the alternating targets, or if maybe she just sensed greatness in her presence, but she told me to sit down and "Daddy do it" again. And daddy do it I did. With precision I moved the stream of water from foot to foot, to soap bar, back to foot... and when the bell rung, it was our bath guy that got the shower. More hugs and hero worship, maybe even a "You're the best Daddy ever" - a line usually reserved for when I allow her to do something that I have just previously told her she can not do. In any case, I win again, and my child's adoration is my great reward.
Her reward in both cases were plush somethings she'd more or less forgotten about by the time we got home. But my, albeit faded, glory shall endure- if not in her memory, at least in mine. And may it always be that simple to gain hero-status in my daughter's eyes.