Part of last weekend's fun was taking my friend T.'s kiddies to a corn maze. I heart fall activities - pumpkin patches, apple orchards, hay rides, you name it- so when T. mentioned a corn maze as an option, I was all for it.
My prior corn maze experience was limited to one encounter in high school, at the Fairfax County Fair. My friends and I had spent the whole day at the Fair, and didn't make it over to the corn maze until after the sun had already set. I don't recall much about our a-maze-ing experience, though I imagine vandalism and breaking the rules were involved, because after all, these were the hallmarks of my high school era. [I do remember that my friend Tully invented the character of "Stumpy" while we were in the maze - "I'm Stumpy! I have a stump for an arm! Aaaaarrgggh!" was pretty much how that scene went.]
But I digress.
This time around I was looking forward to truly absorbing the quaint Americana kitsch of a corn maze, breathing in autumn air, hanging out with toddlers who think that everything is fun and funny and new (I should have tried out "Stumpy" on them - I bet that would have been a hit), exchanging tall urban architecture for towering corn stalks, and just generally slipping into a simpler agrarian mode for a few hours.
Here is the map we received at the entrance of the maze:
What the.....? Cal Ripken, Jr.? I was especially perturbed given Cal's recent appearance in my dreams. Also, I'm not sure the corn-based rendering does justice to Cal's features - his face looked kinda lumpy and creepy. In my role as maze navigator, I found myself using phrases I never thought I'd ever have occassion to say, like "Ok, we're going to take a right at Cal Ripken's jaw" and "We're inside Cal's ear. We need to head east."
After my group made it out of the maze, parched from the dust and hot from the sun, we headed towards the concession stand for some beverages. T. asked the concession worker if they had cider, because we figured that if we were going to do autumn fun right, we should have some apple cider. It's autumn in a glass!
The concession worker, a girl probably about the same age as I was at my first corn maze encounter, shook her head. "We have Sprite," she countered, as if Sprite and cider were logical substitutes. Nope.
Cider-less, we still managed to enjoy the rest of the afternoon playing in corn, tromping through a pumpkin patch, and visiting a little on-site petting zoo.
"Bye, dogs!" T.'s toddler said to the goats.
"Bye, Cal!" I said to the corn.
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