Poppa and the shwing set

Our granddaughter wanted a swhing (she can’t say swing) set for her birthday. I suggested we get one that would last awhile in the hope that someday there will be other grandchildren. I never should have made that statement to my husband. He’s an over-achiever with a past history of biting off more than he can chew.  When he goes through the buffet line at the Chinese restaurant his plate looks like a small mountain topped off with three or four giant egg rolls. He NEVER manages to eat it all (thank goodness) but it ever stops him from filling up his plate. His philosophy is more is better and bigger is best.

Immediately after I mentioned that I wanted a durable, decent sized swing set, he began searching the Internet. Before I could say “how long will it take you to assemble that?” he was in the car, had a trailer hooked up to the hitch and was on the road to go purchase it. He drove 45 miles to a store that had what he wanted on clearance, only to get there at closing time. He mashed his nose up against the door and looked pitiful but it didn’t work, so he came home and tried again the next day.

He arrived in plenty of time but when he went to pay for it the price wasn’t what the lady on the phone had told him it would be. He asked to see the manager and the lady pointed toward the back of the store. While he waited in line he called me to tell me what was going on.

“Honey,” I said, “I know how you are. You are too nice. Don’t you let her convince you to pay the regular price when the sales person clearly told you it was a clearance price. You’ve driven down their twice to get the thing and by George they should let you have it for what they priced it to you on the phone.”

While I’m making my speech I hear screaming and yelling in the background.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“That’s the lady I’m behind in line. She’s giving the manager what for over something,” he said.

“Well, you don’t have to be that mean. I think she’s going overboard.”

“I gotta go,” he said. “I’m next.”

He called me back a few minutes later with the news that he was on his way home. “They sold it to me at the clearance price. The manager was so freaked out by the lady throwing the fit that I think she would have given me anything I wanted to make me happy.”

I smiled, happy that my granddaughter birthday wish was going to come true. Later that day Poppa arrived home with the super duper swing set on the trailer…in boxes…four boxes.

I looked at it, looked at the birthday cake with the candles ready to be lit and asked what I should have asked a long time ago.

“How long will it take you to assemble that?”

He gets out the packet of instructions. “It says here it takes two men forty hours to put it together.”

Our granddaughter is four years old. A long time to wait in her opinion is 5 minutes, to ask her to wait 40 hours was unimaginable.

So I did what I should have done in the first place. I went and got a swing set myself. It wasn’t as big as the one my husband got but it only took him and my son three hours to put together. My granddaughter was able to play on it and her birthday was a blast.

As for the other swing set….

Need I say more?