No, Seriously?

So, I get home from work last night, and Mrs. G. tells me that TheBoy lost his water bottle. Now, you parents out there are shrugging and saying, yeah, so what? Kids lose water bottles all the time. Heck, my kids are always losing their water bottles - we keep several sets going at any given time because we know a replacement bottle may need to be pressed into service at a moment's notice. But this time it was different: He didn't actually lose it this time, this time he had to get rid of it.

You see, the summer program we've got the kids enrolled in does a field trip every week. This week it was a trip to see a baseball game at the local A Minor league affiliate team. The ballpark doesn't allow you to bring in food or beverages from outside - it says so right in their FAQ on the web page. So, naturally, when TheBoy went up to the gate with his summer camp group, they made him throw the water bottle out. Their park, their rules. The bus they had chartered picked them up at the school and dropped them off, so he couldn't put it back on the bus, so he had no alternative but to throw away a perfectly good metal water bottle.

I'm a little irked at the camp counselors for letting a nine year old kid get off the bus with the bottle in his hand, but then again, these are teenaged kids working a summer job. All I expect from them is that they leave with exactly [X] kids in the morning, they come back with exactly [X] kids in the afternoon. Ideally they would all be the same kids as what left in the morning, and also not have any protruding bones or gaping flesh wounds, but as long as the kids all make it back, that's about it.

I'm more irked at the ballpark for either allowing a little discretion in letting a nine year old kid into the park with his summer camp group with a simple metal water bottle or at least offer a place to leave such items. I'll give the park attendants the benefit of the doubt here and assume that their hands are tied - that they're not allowed to use their discretion. It's a sad, pathetic world where a kid has to lose his favorite water bottle because of some zero tolerance rule that can't be massaged a little - had he dumped out the water and continued into the park, he would have been obeying their rules to the letter with no food or drink. At the very least, let him put it aside and collect it after the game - you're talking about a single A league on a Monday afternoon; not exactly full capacity.

Anyways, it just rubbed me the wrong way. We gave TheBoy money for lunch and souvenirs, and he was very responsible that way. He even used more money buying water inside the park rather than spending it all on trinkets and such. The idea that we've become a nation that blithely allows grown men and women to tell an elementary school child that they can't bring a friggin' water bottle into a baseball park scares and angers me - even Fenway Park allows water bottles to be brought (in all fairness, they do have to be sealed factory bottles).

One thing's for certain, though: they won't have to worry about us bringing anything into the park in the future - including ourselves.

That is all.