Gage and the Cave

What was I thinking?  I don’t know.  I guess I let my love for caves overshadow my knowledge of a two year old’s behavior.  He was scared to go in the wooden crawling maze inside the gift shop, so I’m just grateful that we didn’t have any more fear crop up once we started down into the cave itself. 

Gage was my responsibility on this adventure.  You just don’t make a pregnant woman carry a twenty-six pound child down 250 slippery steps.  A pregnant woman probably shouldn’t have been going down in the cave in the first place.  Now, in my opinion, it would have been so cool if she had given birth while we were down there.  How many kids could say that they were born in a cave??  Spelunking would be my little girl’s birthright!  I ran this idea by my wife and she was neither as excited nor as in favor of the suggestion as I was.

I should have known we were in for a ride when the tour guide started off with a ten minute explanation of the history of Talking Rocks.  The only thing that saved me from having more toddler than I could handle is that we sat down next to a cute teenage girl.  He spent the entire introduction flirting with her, and boy did he turn on the charm.

Once the actual tour got started, things got a little rocky (no pun intended).  Let me just say that the boredom of a two year old is a force of nature, not unlike a hurricane or tornado.  You just kind of grab on to them and hold on for the ride.

Our entire tour consisted of climbing or descending stairs, and pausing intermittently for long periods of time while the tour guide pontificated on some odd geological nonsense or other.  I wouldn’t know because I spent these periods of time wrestling with my youngest as he climbed all over me like a rabid spider monkey.  I had to keep a tight watch on him for fear that I’d punt lose him over the side of a seventy-foot drop.  This was made worse by the fact that my arms were tired from the last three days at the water park playing ‘Gage ball’ in the pool.  Add in the little girl who had a panic attack and had to be taken to the surface, which was an extra fifteen minutes of idle standing, and I was absolutely exhausted by the time we got to the bottom.

One great feature of caves is that their temperature remains constant year round.  In the summer it feels nice and cool, in the winter it’s nice and warm.  When grappling with a bored toddler, this has no effect.  It’s sixty degrees year round in this cave, but I had sweat dripping off me in rivulets.

Boredom aside, I’m rather proud of how he handled himself.  We had a couple of close calls, once when the eight year old girl started wailing like a banshee with a saxophone; I could tell he was trying to figure out how to react to it.  Another time, when we made it to the bottom of the chasm and the guide turned all the lights out for way too long, he started to get a little tense, but we passed these experiences with flying colors.

I think I’ve learned an important lesson here, though.  When you put your child in a situation that tests the limits of their behavior, either be patient or be prepared for the consequences.