Visiting the new “Clifford the Big Red Dog” exhibit at the Minnesota Children’s Museum was like being inside the Mad Max Thunderdome. Tiny tribes of face painted preschoolers menacingly stalked the exhibit room. They hovered around each display; man handled the crap out of every fun colored prop, and then discarded the scraps.  Murphy and I were there with my friend Nick and his son Ethan.   The four of us stood next to a huge dog bowl patiently waiting our turn to fill it with oversized foam dog bones: We were quickly overrun. Two beady eyed brothers viscously battled over the foam dog bones. The older brother wrenched them away and muttered an intelligible war cry. The little brother knocked over the stack of dog bones and a battle royale started. The older brother freaked out, stormed off, and carried all of the foam bones with him.

In the water works exhibit room, Nick and I stood with our backs against a wall. As our kids played with the bubbles and plumbing tubes, I regaled Nick with a story of how one of my blue collar coworkers used to guzzle beers on his lunch break.

“The guy used to F***ing drink forty ouncers of malt liquor in the bathroom,” I said. 

Nick burst out laughing. What Nick found most funny about the story was that I dropped a glorious F-Bomb in the middle of the bubble room at the Children’s Museum. Nick pointed out that an Extreme Dad was giving me the evil eye for my transgression. Extreme Dad had on cargo pants, a REI sun hat, and a massive back pack that was no doubt loaded with organic snacks, Chinese flash cards, and an inflatable raft just in case there was a flash flood inside the museum.

We ate lunch in the McDonalds that was adjacent to the downtown St. Paul skyway. The food court was an insane mix of suburban families who’d visited the Children’s Museum and the legions of homeless men who lived downtown. I hung my jacket on the back of a chair and we ate a bunch of crappy food. When we were set to leave, my jacket fell underneath the table. I grabbed it and accidently mopped the floor with my sleeve. Nick gasped in horror. My whole jacket was coated in some sort of unholy gunk. A thick, clear liquid oozed off the sleeve and onto my pants.

“Is that what I think it is?” Nick asked.

Welcome to the Thunderdome: Two men enter; one man leaves (with bodily excrement on his sleeve).