Houston: Attempting to befriend a 3 year old.

When your entire family is spread across three different time zones, getting everyone together in the same spot can prove difficult. An opportunity presented itself this week, so on a whim, I hopped a plane to Houston to see my parents and my sister at the same time. As a package deal with my sister, I also got to see my three year old niece. For unexplained reasons, she is terrified of me. Last year for the winter holidays, she held my hand once, but it was by mistake. When one is 3 ft tall, everyone's hand looks the same.

As one who spends lots of time on airplanes, often with a desire to nap, small children are my natural enemy. Nevertheless, I accepted the challenge of finding some common ground. This was not dissimilar to the Camp David peace accords.

Houston is one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., and what were empty fields just a few years ago have turned into fully developed communities with new parks and facilities. We walked to one such park where my niece proceeded to run the drive-thru at a fast food restaurant. Common ground. Surely my two years working at Culver's would now pay off, (at $6/hr they sure didn't pay off back then am I right?) I played the role of the customer the only way I knew how. I ordered a combo, but made a substitution followed by a substitution to the substitution. My niece didn't even flinch and in short order I was handed a small rock. The fast food industry and its customers should learn from this. Once you receive a rock, you know you've gone too far.

These rocks proved helpful, however, because one of the unique features of the park was a streambed and water pump. One could divert the flow of water to a different stream by damming an area with rocks. This is actually far more entertaining than it probably sounds. Even the three year old kept herself occupied with digging and damming for probably an hour. She continued to run over to me with more rocks to do some dam stuff. 

The following day we went to downtown Houston to visit the museum of natural science. The highlight was the dinosaur hall, which had lots of skeletons. My niece covered the exhibit space in about 45 seconds. "Spiky dinosaur!, big dinosaur!, flying dinosaur!, dinosaur eating another dinosaur's butt!" Her enthusiasm and energy were exhausting me. That being said, out of our original group of five, I was asked to drive home with three people passed out in the backseat. *Sidenote: the Toyota Highlander does not have the same turning radius as a Hyundai Elantra. This caused some issues. Also, everyone in Texas drives a truck. Also, gas in Houston is $1.97/gallon. These are all foreign concepts to me as an Angeleno. I had to maintain a low profile while in town, for everyone knows that Texans think everyone in California is some Hillary-loving, free-trade promoting, Prius-driving, pot-smoking, vegan munching, whole foods shopping, gun hating, coffee shop screenwriting, tree hugging pansy. I figured all of this would be masked by wearing my t-shirt that simply says "TEXAS."