Keydran

This past Tuesday, I took a kid from Yellowstone Academy (yellowstoneacademy.org; a local school in the third ward of Houston) to the Rodeo. His name was Keydran and he was four years old. Kids can be awesome and Keydran was no exception. Pictured above are his happy face and his 'tough' face.

I was nervous when it started out. First off, I was sick and kind of grouchy. Also I don't discipline kids well, so I was a bit worried that I might get a kid that gets out of line and I really wanted him to have a good time. Thankfully, he was awesome. He told me his mom and dad's names, asked me why my hair was how it was, asked what my parents' names are; I guess these are typical kid questions. So the day got off a bit slow. I was having trouble hearing what he was saying. But we got on the bus, grabbed a seat and got to know each other a bit. He loved looking out the window and telling me where his nana lived at, and pointing out 'muscle trucks,' which to him were just large trucks. I asked him what he wanted to eat. First he said "chicken," which later turned into "chicken and shrimp," then just "shrimp."

We get off of the bus, enter the Rodeo and headed straight to the Agriventure (Agriculture Adventure, you like the play on words?). He was excited about the cows and horses. I felt kind of bad because the school explicitly told us not to pay for anything extra for them. So that meant no pony rides. But he enjoyed watching things.

Next we went to the petting zoo, which he was really excited about. There were goats, a turkey, sheep, and I think a cow. I personally would like to meet the person who is excited about petting a cow or a turkey. Anyway, he got a little bit nervous when the goats started approaching him. Some of those things were bigger than he was. I tried to encourage him to pet the goats, but he would only try and pet the baby goats. Finally, we got out of there and headed over to watch the pig race.

We got front-row seats to the pig races, which is apparently popular with the kids. There were four series of races, one lap around each. For the second race, he was picked as the cheer kid for our section (four pigs, four sections, each cheers for a pig). Unfortunately the pig for our section was slow and stumbled a bit. No win, no key chain, and no Oreos. But he was still pretty excited. He said he had a lot of fun though.

We left the races, but he decided that he wanted to go see rabbits before we ate. I was getting worried that he wasn't going to get lunch and the school would be pissed off at me. So we rushed around the Agventure to try and find the bunnies. However, a discrepancy existed between the maps in hand and the maps at the event, so we wandered to the farthest corner of the building (really far to walk for a four year old), and as Murphy's law would have it, the bunnies were of course not there. I scanned the map-in-hand and rushed back to where the ponies were at. Of course they were there. He was a good sport about everything and he walked pretty fast. Before we ventured on our trip to see the rabbits, he kept urging me to ask where the bunnies were at. Guess Keydran was a little bit smarter than I was. Asking would have saved time and energy.

We get to the bunnies, he pets them, and he's happy. He also got a ruler on the way into the event and he was pretty excited about that. Finally, it was time to eat. We got to the shrimp place and he decided that he wanted fish instead (there was a giant plastic fish hanging from the rafters). So I got him a Catfish dinner. While all the other kids were eating corn dogs or chicken tenders, Keydran walks up with fried catfish, rice, and a piece of bread. Enough food to feed an adult. He also really wanted a lemonade. So I sat him down, and walked over to get him a lemonade. He also wanted sauce for the fish, so I got him cocktail sauce and tartar sauce. I don't think he liked either one. Then he wanted a bag of BBQ chips. So I got up again and got him that. I forget how cute four year olds can be. After eating about a quarter of the fish, he tells me he wants to take it home with him. I was pretty sure that wasn't going to fly, but I asked his teacher. She said no, so I returned and told him we couldn't take it. He looked mildly disappointed, but he closed the lid of the box, got up, dropped it in the garbage can, and stared at it for a few seconds. He wandered around after that for a while, eating his chips and looking very content.

Finally it was time to head back to the bus to go back to school. He seemed really sad. I mean we barely saw any of the animals that were there. Hell, I was even kind of disappointed. I was kind of wondering why they didn't allot more time for them to spend at the Rodeo, but I never asked. I stopped to grab him some cotton candy. He pulled off a piece bigger than his head, ate a few bites and decided he didn't like it. So I ate it myself and shared it with some of the other kids in his class. I also got a chance to talk to some of the other volunteers. One woman was extremely friendly and asked how I got involved in helping out. She also told me how the median income for the families of the children was $9600/year. I was truly shocked. She also told me about other opportunities to help the school out regularly.

We finally got on the bus to head back. Keydran looked exhausted and about five minutes into the ride back, he fell asleep on me. It was pretty cute. We got back to the school, I walked him back to class and said goodbye. He asked if he would see me again, and I told him I would come back. So now, I have to stick to my promise.