A Slice of a Trip Down to Scheels Sports

Hayden (5 yrs. old), Sophia (2 yrs. old), and I are in the men's bathroom at Scheels All Sports out of necessity and circumstance. After Sophia looks with her hands where the liquid disappears in a urinal it's time to wash them. In case she touches anything else I quickly pick her up and carry her over to the sinks, set her back down and reach up to give the soap dispenser lever a pull to successfully fill the palm of my hand with a mound of white, bubbly foam. I take what I'...ve got in my hands and put it into hers, then tell her to rub her hands together. As she's doing this I get her picked up and horizontally position her over the sinks so she can rinse her hands off. To an outside observer this could look like I'm playing airplane with my daughter. When in reality I'm worn down, frazzled, and just want to get the hell out of the store after spending well over two hours in there bowling 20 frames of miniature bowling, finding hidden children in racks of clothes from one end of the store to the other, helping reassemble a camping mess kit, chasing down what they call the "First and Best Really Bouncy balls ever created", and so on. We get her hands rinsed off and I fly her over to the electric-forced-air hand dryers, she smacks the button and starts to handle the hot air. Meanwhile I look over at the machine next to ours and there is my son positioned under the rush of hot air with his mouth wide open, lips and puffed out cheeks vibrating from the blast of air. "What in the heck are you doing, H?" I exhaustingly ask. "I'm drying my mouth out, dad!"

That's how our experience ended at Scheels in Eau Claire yesterday