McScavenger Hunt

On our way back from Normandy, we stopped along the highway for lunch at a French McDonald's.

It had touch-screen kiosks, like ATM's, where you could order your food.

It had a cafe, where you could order actual pastries and cappuccino.

And it had a McDonald Land Playland your kid could leave little poops all over, like some scatological Easter Egg Hunt where even in you win, you lose.

You see, Potty Training Roxy entails asking her if she needs to use the potty, then taking her to the bathroom if the answer is yes.

If we are distracted, Roxy will usually come up to us and say "peepees in the potty," which means "I'm about to pee in my pants. Let's get a move on, people."

Except, on this particular day, Roxy came up to us to say "Doggy on the slide!"

Now, if you have kids, you know they frequently come up to you to inform you of, pardon the harsh tone, meaningless bulls**t. "Stop-a-stop," "tinkerbell pancake," "One! Two! Six! Blue!" These are all previous News Flashes Roxy has felt compelled to share with us.

And as there clearly wasn't an actual dog loose on the playground, I went back to my lunch.

Roxy repeated it. Only now, we noticed she didn't say doggy. She said cocky.

"What does 'cocky on the slide' mean?" I asked.

Sensing trouble, Leni spun Roxy around; it looked like someone had poured an entire bag of Peanut M&M's into her underpants. M&M's someone had sucked the candy-coated-shell off of. And underpants that were clearly about to surrender all of their elasticity in protest. The nightmare was about to get worse.

So while Leni rushed Roxy into the bathroom to do damage control, I casually strolled over to the play structure to see if we had dodged a bullet. Or bullets, as it were.

Not a chance.

And that's how, on our last day in France, I found myself exploring a McDonald Land Playland, crawling around with an empty French Fry cup in my hand, retracing Roxy's steps, and scooping up the trail along the way.