Freaks. We are all freaks.

“No turtles!” A woman screamed at the top of her lungs in a deep, gravelly, caustic voice. Her approximately eighteen-month-old daughter toddled away from the exit of the playground back over to the slide. Visions of the turtles in the nearby pond were glistening in her hopeful eyes.

Her mother, the one with the deep, gravelly, caustic voice, was a large woman. She looked a bit like what people from other countries must think Americans look like if they’ve based their ideas on redneck memes circulating the internet. She was the redneck meme spokeswoman. And so began my introduction to the park this afternoon.

Ah, the park. In particular, this park is always an adventure, for adults and children alike. Children see castles and jungles and mazes in the two-story playground equipment. Adults see one intriguing character study after the next, just waiting to be picked apart.

I sat on the astro turf, me and Old Man Dog, basking in the warm afternoon sun. We were over next to the swings, out of the way. It didn’t matter, the meme spokeswoman immediately captured me with her voice from across the playground as soon as I sat down.

“How sweet,” she called out, “Your kids are taking turns on the slide. Mine will just shove each other out of the way.” I nodded politely, not really sure what to say to that. Her voice seemed to bounce off the metal equipment, booming against anything in its path. I eyed her physique with intrigue. The waste line of her pants cut into an oddly spherical midsection, dividing it in half like an equator. The northern hemisphere looked to be on the verge of spilling over, but the southern hemisphere was equally uncomfortable.

"Look at this stick hit the water!"

A third party joined us. She was a meek looking one. The poor thing, I could see it happening before it happened. She clearly was inexperienced on the playground—her son looked to be only about two—she was naïve yet. She left herself wide open sitting within ten feet of the meme spokeswoman. She stood there in her skinny jeans and a comfortable sweatshirt, perfectly normal, perfectly mild, perfectly available to be the listening end of a one-sided conversation.

“Watch out for that boy!” The normal woman called out to her son, who was edging close to another boy on the slide.

“Oh don’t worry about him, you can be mean to that one,” the spokeswoman said of her own son with a chuckle. And so it began. The poor normal woman, held hostage by a conversation full of distastefulness.

Then came a grandma with two frilly poodles. They yapped at Old Man Dog, who looked on at them like the perfect family man. He puts on a good show at the park. He doesn’t let anybody see what he does when the mailman comes…

“They just like to bark to say hello,” the grandma said in a heavy northeastern accent. I tried not to cringe. Each word rolled off abrasively like sandpaper against the smooth words of the south. I nodded politely at the rabid poodles. A thin man followed her and they settled down at a bench. The man took the reins to the poodles and she began a thorough explanation of her rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, berating a few doctors, and making good use of her free hands by gesture.

I looked.

Then came a man. He walked ahead of his two children like a fearless leader. He had a football in his hands, held firm, like it was too precious to trust with either of the children following behind him with erect posture. I’d met this weirdo before. He berated his daughter for touching my dog, although she had my permission. Dog touching apparently was some sort of breach in the moral code. He walked on, leading them across the playground, but before long he led them away again. Perhaps something did not meet his approval.

I wonder what they all thought of me: the woman sitting over in the corner with her bag of homeschool supplies, letting her dog lap water out of her cupped hand, secretly or not so secretly watching all the bystanders in silence.

Freaks. We are all freaks.

Forty-five minutes later normal woman’s son peed his pants, and like that, she was set free.