KODAK MOMENTS.

The round tables and plastic chairs in their bright colours excite the children. A sitting statue on a bench elicits a lot of snaps with the proud parents clicking their children with their cell phone cameras in a frenzy. Maybe, they would frame this snaps. The meals offer small innovative toys as bribes to entice the children. I avoid greasy food and hate the guilt inducing thick shakes and sugary ice cream. I just sit there awaiting my kids to finish their meal. I normally would never venture into such joints but the kids drag me there. They are attracted to this place as the bees to the flowers. Some parents actually enjoy eating also. Anything goes. The screen was coming to life with the vivid colours and animated figures attacking us with their swords and guns. We would swerve to avoid the impact of the bullets and shrapnel. The 3D movie was driving the kids nuts. They enjoyed and begged me to take them to such movies more often. I headed to the nearest chemist shop to gulp a couple of Naprosyn tablets to cure my Migraine. The glasses with the smudge of finger prints from the previous users distorted my vision. No amount of vigorous rubbing with my hanky would help. The exchanged glasses were even worse. The kids hardly noticed that I was seeing the movie without my 3D glasses. I tried to doze off but the screeching background music helped me stay awake. The sand lot in my building is a much favoured spot by my son. Every morning begins with a predictable bawling which only stops when I take him down to the sand lot garden. He sits on my lap and we swing and his happiness knows no bounds. I make him ride the mini slide. All the time, he is giggling with joy. I spend half an hour in the morning with him in the garden. I do not remember me as a child on a swing. We were sports fanatics and the garden was considered as a abode of the girls. A bat and a ball used to be our constant companions. Maybe, God was trying to fill in my lost hours of childhood by pushing me daily to the garden. The kids are always ecstatic in such activities. They want us to take part in them. We have to. The smiles on their rosy faces are captured by us as "Kodak Moments". We have to live for such moments. Meanwhile, My kids are scanning the paper's movie section for the latest 3D movie. I pop the painkiller pills prior to the movie and enjoy the movie rolling in the cushioned seats. My wife is unlike me and is a kid at heart. Hope, she does not read this blog!