The Ringlet Throws!!!! She Scores!!!! The Crowd Goes Wild!!!

Finding myself exceedingly bored and discovering Mr. Ringie down for the count with a migraine thanks to an overindulgence in Chinese food the night before, Ringlet and I decided to trek down the road a bit to the annual renaissance festival. It had been some years since I had been there and Ringlet had never been there as a grown up kid, so, since she was bored as well, and in light of the prospect of scoring some cool stuff at the vendor's tents, off we went.We wandered around looking at things, checking out some of the shows, snagging and horking down steak on a stake and eventually came upon a relatively bawdy dunk tank. I believe the word "wench" was used in the description somewhere. There was a pretty fair sized crowd watching the fun and gathered around the throwing area was the usual group of young men of varying ages ranging from about 17 to 24, all of whom were paying their dollar and winging softball sized leather sandbags at the target for all they were worth. Seldom, if ever, did they hit anything other than wall and dirt, but they didn't quit. Ringlet watched for a minute or two and then turned to me and requested a dollar. Not being the kind of mom to discourage her from trying anything within the confines of the law and within my ability to remain sane, I forked over the dollar and leaned against a tree to watch her calmly take her place in line behind all these big guys.

She's a pretty tall kid for her age and not a small or petite child by anybody's standards, but standing there amid all those young men in her karate t-shirt, baggy shorts and John Force Racing cap, she looked positively tiny. But she stood there, blond hair cascading down her back from under her cap, calmly clutching her dollar and waiting her turn. Eventually, as the young men gave up and one by one peeled off to the side, she moved up to the front of the line, reached up and waved her dollar in the face of the guy running the game who didn't even see her there, and got her three leather bean bags. All the young men had faded back to congregate off to the left of my tree and were smirking at the sight of a little girl trying to dunk the wench when they had all so miserably failed. Ringlet tossed the first bag in her hand a few times, getting a feel for the thing, peered over her shoulder to grin at me, turned, took a step back and launched that sucker in a wicked-hard over hand (nobody will ever accuse her of throwing like a girl) and BAM....down went the wench. The game-guy whirled around at the sound, spun back around, stared at her for a brief moment, leaned down to say something to the Ringlet and then stood up, placed both hands on the counter and bellowed at the now silent group of men: “YOU. Yes YOU, you so-called men there. Didja SEE that? Did you? That was a ten.year.old.girl. Ten. A girl. Each of you stand up here and turn in your man cards." One of the young men had enough presence of mind to yell back "yeah, a ten year old girl.........with a fricken CANNON for an arm!" She was so flustered and pleased that as the crowd howled in amusement and approval, she missed the next two shots. But she was so tickled and I laughed the rest of the day.

Now and then through the course of the afternoon, we'd pass by those young men and, invariably, one of them would strike a boxing pose and say "Hey, look out. If she can throw, she can probably punch too."

"Probably punch"

Right. I guess maybe I’d failed to tell them that little girl not only has an arm like a cannon, but that she also kicks like a mule, and has a brown belt.

My bad.