Mall Rats- The Longest Day of Vacation (Part 2: Free T-Shirts)

"Myyyyyyyy leeeeeegs huuuuuurt," Evan's vowels exploded all over the sidewalk. He sounded more like a howler monkey warning us about a nearby harpy eagle or jaguar than an eight-year-old asked to walk to the Lincoln Memorial. We encouraged, begged, implored and demanded that he catch up. This merely succeed in embarrassing and annoying him. I was walking a few paces ahead of Colette and Evan when in a fit of pique Evan ran up and struck Colette in the behind. I am not sure what he hoped to accomplish with this act of rebellion, but what he got was obviously not it. Reflexively Colette reached back to defend her posterior and made contact with Evan's bass drum abdomen causing a hollow thump to reverberate across the Potomac.

It sounded much worse than it was, but did little to improve diplomatic relations. An entire page of the scrapbook is devoted to "grumpy bridge."

"You are going to be in this picture and like it. Now come on."

"Huunhh I'm going stay on this bench forever."

I do want to make a quick detour into a discussion about the conservation of energy. As you can see above, benches were spaced evenly across the bridge, and Evan conceived a brilliant plan. He started running to the benches to sit and wait for us. Technically it is the same amount of work using Newtonian physics, but Evan is more of quantum guy. In Evan's conception of the universe the rest given to his legs is cumulative. So is it better to turtle or rabbit? Aesop would have you know that slow and steady wins the race, but which style results in less strain on the calves and blisters on the feet.

Philosophical conundrums aside, complaints continued to dive-bomb our ears like the unidentifiable black flying bugs that infest the mall. Extensive research, and by extensive I mean I googled it for a minute, reveals that they may be Cicada Killer Wasps. I'm not buying it since one of them flew into my eye. Evan insisted that they were bees and ran away from them like they were cans and he was The Jerk. If only we could have run from his complaints. As we reach the bottom of the stair to the Lincoln Memorial, they reached a crescendo.

Fortunately we were able to appeal to Evan's love of the Great Emancipator to drag himself up the 57 steps to view the Daniel Chester French sculpture. We took some pics, read Lincoln's words and visited the gift closet. We eventually headed back down to what I assumed was lunch.

"Four weeks and seven hours ago our Evan beheld his hero."

However, the nature of the National Mall is that everything is just a few steps away, and in this case it was the Vietnam War Memorial. At this time I also started to notice other tourists toting bundles of t-shirts. I have developed over the years a keen sense for free give-aways and these shirts had all of the tell-tale signs, but mainly it was the fact that people were carrying piles shirts on their shoulders. This of course set off a mild panic. What if all of the shirts were gone before I could ascertain their source. I had to find out where to acquire the gratuitous garments, the complimentary clothing, the no-cost smock. A free shirt could easily assuage some of Evan's "can I have this" tendencies and perhaps soothe his aching legs such is the curative powers of schwag. But first lunch, I mean but first the Vietnam War Memorial and a comedy of communication with Colette's parents.