Home Game by Michael Lewis Page B

things, actually. First, about midway through, a bleak Scandinavian character piece became a spoof on a bleak Scandinavian character piece. Everyone who needed to die died in a hurry, leaving the remaining characters to cope with their despair, unaided. And toward the end of the second act their quiet Nordic depression took a dangerous U-turn, as all at once they discovered, as if they were thinking an original thought, what Scandinavians have known for centuries: If you want to be happy in Scandinavia you have to go to Italy. The second thing that happened resulted directly from this shocking eruption of Scandinavian joie de vivre : Dixie woke up and began to holler.
    The implicit rule at the Parkway is that you can let your baby cry and enjoy the show and no one will think any less of you. The Parkway offers the guilt-relieving sensation usually available only to smokers who find themselves surrounded by other smokers or to fat people who find themselves seated on airplanes with other fat people. But if before you arrive at the Parkway you have earned a reputation with your wife as a neglectful father, this sensation is no longer so easily had. Instead, you must rise and walk around with your child until she is mollified. The final scenes of the movie I glimpsed only out of the corner of my eye. A happy Scandinavian remains, to me, an elusive sight.

THE OTHER NIGHT Quinn and I went camping in Fairyland. Fairyland is a toddler-sized Disneyland smack in the middle of Oakland. Three times each summer it sells tickets to about twenty-five parents and allows them to pitch their tents, and their toddlers, inside the park. For the first time in their young lives, twenty-five small children have a chance to spend the night under the stars or, at any rate, the skyscrapers that loom over Fairyland. A few months ago I mentioned to Quinn that we might do this, and she has been unable to contain herself on the subject ever since. Every other day she has asked me, “When are we going camping in Fairyland?” or “Can we sleep in a tent today?” She’s never been camping or slept in a tent and can’t possibly know what any of it means. That is why she wants so badly to do it.
    We enter not through the main entrance but through a gate in the back of the place between the miniature Ferris wheel and the bumper boats. Twenty-five parents and their toddlers line up and wait for the gate to open so that they can rush in and find the softest, most level patch of grass to pitch their tents. In line are Quinn’s friend Matts and his father, John. John is the reason I am here; John told me about camping in Fairyland. John, who has done this once before, also told me that I didn’t need to bring anything to Fairyland except a tent and sleeping bags: Fairyland would take care of the rest. But John, I notice, carries many more possessions than I do. I have only three large sacks; he has eight. What is in those other five sacks, I wonder? What does an experienced Fairyland camper bring with him that I have neglected to bring?
    The gates swing open and the other families rush to find the best spots in the dish-shaped campground. Quinn is more interested in the fact that she appears to have Fairyland entirely to herself, and she rushes off past the Ferris wheel to pet the donkeys. The great thing about Fairyland, from the point of view of a three-year-old, is that it is designed with a thirty-six-inch-high person in mind. The horses on the carousel are designed for a thirty-six-inch-high person, the cars in the steam train are designed for a thirty-six-inch-high person, the long tunnel in the Alice-in-Wonderland section is designed for a thirty-six-inch-high person. It’s a home explicitly for children between the ages of two and five; any ordinary seven-year-old is made to feel unwelcome. With one exception, it is a Lilliputian world drawn perfectly to scale. The exception is the donkeys. These large animals, which