Largish Family Discrimination

The local train has a Santa train every year on one day in December. It's fun. You get to ride on the train. Get a coloring book and candy cane. And Santa pays a visit to each car.

In order to get tickets you must find out ahead of time when tickets go on sale, be at the sale location early to get in line, and purchase the tickets. Hopefully you noted on their website where it says “cash and checks only”. Because someone like myself – the person that NEVER has cash and is lucky to remember where the checkbook is because you NEVER EVER use the checkbook – could get stuck waiting for nothing. You would think that these were Hannah Montana tickets as quickly as they sell out. Ok. Not quite. And they’re only $5 per person instead of like $13,000 for 4.

But anyway, this year we have one more hurdle to jump. You can only purchase 6 tickets per person. So I called the train station and explained that I have 5 children so for our whole family to go on the train I need to purchase 7 tickets.

“I’m sorry ma’am, we cannot sell more than 6 tickets to anybody except for the 1:30 train” was her response.

So why don’t I want the 1:30 train you may ask. Because it’s right in the middle of the day where all the kids are more likely to melt down. I might as well spend $35 to stab myself in the eye. So I nicely said to the woman that the policy wasn’t really fair to large families and hung up.

I started thinking about this. I will have all the kids with me in line (minus Jordan). Mikayla can talk. Mikayla can purchase her own ticket. So I told Mikayla that I would give her money but she would have to ask for a ticket on the 10:30 train and give the woman the money. She said “Sure mom, just write me a note so I remember what to say.”

Did I mention she can’t read?