Fragments From Floyd

It was called something like "The Fun Palace" and I had my doubts on the way over the mountain from Sylva to Franklin. Her momma hyped it all the way there and Abby entered the huge indoor one-story "amusement park" with great expectations, I with an equal dread. Measured by decibels and razzle, the place was dazzling, but the mostly small kids there during regular school hours seemed more dazed than entertained.

As it turned out, we didn't stay. We hadn't converted our cash into the appropriate tokens, we learned, once Abby settled on one sideshow she wanted to sample. We decided we had had enough already, and left. Abby said matter-of-factly "That was boring. I thought it was the FUN Palace. It was the Boring Palace."

Her mom knew of a park (the old fashioned kind with grass below, sky above) --a place with no neon or noise, and no tokens needed. Ann encouraged Abby to "look for treasures!" (since she'd found some kind of plastic bauble and tossed it off in the grass for Abby to find.) It wasn't long before she had found a tail-less kite complete with string, and we watched her run back and forth in the grass under the April sky with the blue kite spinning near the ground behind her, her imagination and her muscles at play.

I remembered the little girl sitting in the dark din of video distraction under a metal roof, back in the Boring Palace, and wished that she were here.