One thing was certain about Patakis. Cheerfulness wasn't one of their natural states. Big Bob and Helga bought their tickets and entered Dinoland, but then they stood around to stare. The "amusement" part of the amusement park seemed less amusing in one another's company. Both stood stiffly, afraid to crack a smile and seem less "dignified" in one another's presence.
"Right," Big Bob Pataki uttered out as a whole slew of younger children interacted with their parents. Helga flinched back a bit at their passing, as if their whole, lovey-buddy emotion might be contagious. She grimaced with a disgusted expression, then slanted her gaze at Bob. But to her relief, the man stood his ground, showing no indication to get all buddy-buddy like that.
"Ew," Helga squinted at some of the girlified, but curious inflated plastic animals which hung from a vendor's stall. She scratched a finger at one of them. "I wonder if they sell anything a bit more masculine. Although look at those prices! Jeezum."
"Yeah? Look at that, you're right Helga!" the man said. So, on impulse, the two toured the stalls. They stopped by every stall not to buy, but to stare up at the posted signs as if they were the curiosities of a petting zoo.
"Can I help you, sir?" one of the amusement park vendors asked, even though they stood to the side.
"Huh? No, we were just looking," Big Bob mused. "Oh crud! I forgot! We're at a amusement park! We should be going on rides or something!"
"Hm," was Helga's thought even though she had been amused by reading the vendor's boards as much as Bob had been.
"So where to first?"
"Well," thought Helga deeply. "The roller coaster is a classic."
So they rode on the roller coaster. But then Helga hopped off. There was someplace she genuinely wanted to go.
"Come on, Dad!" she said somewhat cheerfully. She had remembered someplace fun to go.
"Where are we going?" asked the man. It was a long walk and they passed many rides they might have stood in line for. But Helga was not in the mood for long lines.
"You've got your wallet right?" Helga said almost cackling.
"Yeah?" the man said a little suspiciously. But Helga's calculated grin had not waned.
"Great! Give it here!" she said as they entered a small building, almost forgotten to others of the park. "Thank you!" she almost sang as she yanked a fifty out of it and shoved it into the token machine. "Money spells forgiveness, right! Ha, ha!"
A flood of tokens too many to count came out of the machine so they carried them in buckets. Helga set one of the pails down on the floor.
"Okay, first things first!" she delighted, dusting off her hands. "A perennial favorite! Arcade rollerball!"
The point of arcade rollerball is to roll balls less heavy than pool billards up over a shoot, over a tiny ramp, and into one of several score cups- like a cross between pinball and bowling. Sometimes the machine will have neon lights which light up when one scores.
Helga dropped one of the tokens into the token slot. A set of seven balls dropped into a shoot at the far right side. She plucked a ball from the shoot.
"Rrrrllll!" A ball launched by Helga rolled up veer a little too left. It missed. Then she pulled another ball out of the shoot and lobbed it.
"Rrrrl, rrrlll, rrrllll!" Helga threw all seven balls in quick succession. Then she pressed a little button for the tickets to print.
"Ooooh!" Helga smiled to herself. "Not a bad haul! Let's go again, then!"
Helga dropped another coin into the game slot. Then another, then another! She played rollerball until the floor was full of tickets and her token bucket was half empty. Then she stopped and scooped up all strips of beautiful red, printed tickets.
"Ah, that was fun!" Helga smiled. "Now about time for something we both can do! You look bored so let's go to the races!"
"Huh?" asked Bob. Helga pointed. There was a very old arcade game with little metal horses running on a racetrack hanging above a set of stools.
"Pick a chair, Bob!" Helga said twirling two tokens between three of her fingers and shoving one each into two separate places. Lights lit up before the two chairs and below the two horses. Helga gestured to a seat, then took her own.
"The horses mainly run by themselves so it's a matter of luck. But you can jiggle this stick to try to get'em to run faster, see?" she remarked. A starting bell like the one for the Kentucky Derby rang out and the fake metal horses began to jiggle and run with disgusting slowness along a groove between fake grass panels. Helga's white mare came in first to the finish line.
"See?" Helga asked. "Let's do it again! Go Buttercup!"
"Go, Samson?" Bob asked a little uncertainly of the red roan figurine he was supposed to be steering.
"That one's Ginger," Helga explained, her nose lowered to the joystick.
"Aw, these nags are slow!" Big Bob complained after awhile even though he had begun to win.
"Aren't they though?" Helga said contentedly. "It's less painful to just watch. See?" Helga pointed out five kids who scrambled onto the stools as soon as the Patakis had vacated them.
"Hey. Wanna bet the one on the far right wins?" Big Bob asked.
"You're on!" grinned Helga. They cheered for several races run by different groups of kids.
"Hey! Save the gambling for the racetrack!" the arcade attendant shouted at them after some time. Helga shoved the five she was about to hand Bob back into her pocket.
"Okay, sheesh! Come on, Bob, I think we've worn out our welcome. We'd better cash in for our prizes."
Soon, Helga and her father exited the dimly lit arcade with a giant teddy bear for Helga. She looked about the sunlit day.
"So where to next?" she inquired. Where indeed? They both thought.
"Well, the lines are letting up," Helga decided at long last. "Let's crash the main attractions. Not literally 'cause that would hurt."
Helga sprinted spiritedly ahead a short distance to stop outside an iron gate. Most of the long, looping crowd which had been there this morning was gone, so there was a short wait. As swiftly as they could, they rode a half dozen rides, then hopped onto a train to take a short ride past a lake. Helga leant far out the window to get a better view of a black, glossy bird drying it's feathers by standing on one foot and tilting it's head towards the sun.
"Hey, it's getting late," Helga's father said. "Do you wanna get some lunch?"
"Are you sure you don't wanna go jeer the magician again?" Helga checked her watch. "There's another show in fourteen minutes."
"Nah! Let's eat," said her Dad. "I'm starvin!" Soon the two of them were seated in one of the amusement park's diners. Her father huffed.
"Man, these prices are terrible! They're making a killing off them, I'm sure!"
"Yup!" Helga said dabbling a thick steak fry into some ketchup. "Well, at least we're not that guy!" said Helga, observing some guy being attacked by seagulls for his meal tray. Helga watched the carnage of seagull and fries. Then she cracked open a dessert cup and prepared to dig a spoon into it.
"Woah, woah, woah!" her father shouted out with alarm. His hands slammed the table as he scooted the dessert cup away from Helga. "What are you doing?! That ice cream has caramel on it!"
"So?" asked Helga, a little alarmed.
"You're allergic to caramel!" said Bob.
"No I'm not!" Helga shouted back. "It's strawberries I'm allergic to!"
"Strawberries, huh?" her Dad said calming as he uncurled his fist from the dessert. "I forgot. But I'll never forget when you ordered a strawberry, caramel, sea-salt cashew banana split."
"I smell a reverie coming on," said Helga. "Why, what happened?"
"Well," said Big Bob having a flashback. "There was this one time back when you were four. Miriam had an appointment that day so I was stuck with you. So I took us to one of my favorite restaurants, had them set up a high chair, bought myself some steak, and sat back to read the paper. It was a fine day- fine as any, so we stayed awhile and when I realized you were hungry I bought you the dessert special. Picked off every one of the cashews myself so you wouldn't choke. But then you started to droop and look funny. And when I realized you were hardly breathing, well- I was terrified."
"What did you do?" Helga asked, deeply intrigued now. The man before her was not the blustering father she typically knew. There was deep, tender concern in his eyes she had so often seen in Arnold's.
"Well, I did the only thing I could do!" Big Bob explained. "I had left the car in a parking lot some blocks off, so I tossed some trash barrels in the intersection to stop traffic, then I ran for the nearest bus across the street. 'I'm sorry sir, I'm off-duty!' the guy running the bus, said. Off-duty my butt! I shoved him off his high-horse and drove the bus myself all the way to the hospital. I got in a heck lotta trouble for that stunt, but I got ya to the hospital in time and handed ya off to a nurse. She got you breathing better! And she told me to never again let you eat caramel!"
"It's strawberry, Dad," said Helga. "Strawberry. But if it makes you feel better, you can buy me another dessert."
"Well, yeah, sorry for messing up the first one," Big Bob asked with a hint of shame as he looked on his small daughter. "Are you angry?"
"Nah!" Helga shrugged. "How could I be? And it's not every daughter who can say their father assaulted a bus driver for them! I'm kinda lucky that way… ironically."
"Well, yeah," Big Bob said gruffly. "It's the sort of thing I figured a good father would do." Helga lifted a brow at her father.
"I'm getting the sense you didn't get a whole lot of love growing up," Helga surmised.
"Well," the man said gruffly. "My parents were both busy putting food on the table. We just went and followed their example. Except it would have helped if my brother and me didn't spend all our wages down on Martini Street."
"Riiight!" said Helga. "Well at least you followed your beeper dream."
"Yeah. It all worked out. With a little work and Pataki determination! I built me a beeper business my ma and pa would've been proud of."
"Un-hum!" Helga slid the remnants of her fries away and dried her lips with her napkin. "Well, thanks for taking me out for Father's Day. It was a surprise, but it's been fun, too."
"Well… I figured," Bob fumbled awkwardly. "I should make it up to you for not being around a whole lot. I hope you can forgive me… for not being a better father."
"Um-hum," though Helga. She rested an elbow on the tabletop, "Alright. About you being a 'better father'. Lemme lay it to you straight, Bob. There's a lot of things you've done to hurt me, but I know most of them were because you're an idiot. And Miriam doesn't even qualify to be an idiot." Big Bob raised his eyebrow, but kept quiet.
"So you see, Bob," Helga endeavored to explain. "It's like this. You and I are a lot alike in the end. We bluster, and we don't really have a good handle on how we feel. We can close our hearts and be kinda cold sometimes. But we're family. Sure we have a whole lotta faults, and our faults stacked together are HUGE, but we've got our strengths, too. We've got loyalty. We're kin, and that's always meant something to me. And," Helga took a deep breath.
"While, you mess up a lot, the important thing is that you always come through for me when the chips are down. I love you, Dad. You may not be the perfect father, but that word still means something to me."
"Gosh, I'm sorry, Helga," Big Bob said, a little bummed. "I'll try not to let you down so much."
"Well, I'm not holding my breath on that one," said Helga. "But we can give it another shot. The whole father-daughter-thing." The two smiled crookedly at one another.
"So shall we go home?" Bob asked.
"Yeah, what the hey! I think we've worn out our welcome at this amusement park anyway. But can we stop somewhere for movie rentals on the way home? I heard there are some good ones coming out. Some reboot or something."
"Sure Helga, sure," the man said as they walked out of the amusement park under a setting sun. The end.