Halloween Scares, a Little Early

I took The Middle Child and a friend of hers (I'll call her Friend for this post) to a local Safety Expo tonight. It's the kind cities have all over; the fire and police departments come out to show off their stuff, which is pretty cool, and all sorts of local vendors hand out candy or other little freebies along with their brochures for some cheap advertising. They had several bounce houses there and the girls went in one of them for a few minutes. All of a sudden the thing started to collapse on the kids! It was sheer chaos from that point; the kids all panicked and tried to get out at once. As we learned from things like the Station Nightclub fire, that's not the best way to get out of a panic inducing situation. The Middle Child managed to get out pretty quickly but Friend was still inside. I couldn't see her; the roof was on top of the kids by this point. Parents were all around the entrance trying to deal with what was going on; I tried to yell to the kids to move back but no one heard me. Finally I saw Friend's head emerge from the entry, then she got an arm out so I grabbed her under her armpits and PULLED. She came out like a cork out of a champagne bottle! I stood her up and she ran off to The Middle Child who was a little way off; I still didn't know if she was OK, but she was moving around so that was a good sign. She was making noise, too- but was she laughing or crying? I couldn't tell! I caught up to her and, huge sigh of relief, she was laughing. I, however, was NOT laughing. I approached a kid who looked like he worked for the bounce house company and asked him what happened. He said the generator that pumps the air ran out of gas. So not cool. I fussed at him and made him all defensive, then asked what company it was and he wouldn't tell me. There was another guy I'd seen him talk to earlier so I ran over to him and sweetly asked him the name of the company, which he was only too happy to tell me, then I let him have it. (I'm PMSing, OK? I don't deal well with a crisis when I'm in this state.) He had the nerve to say he was doing this as a free service for the community and he hoped I was enjoying all the free stuff they were giving out. The NERVE!! I mean, who the heck cares about a bunch of pamphlets and some candy when a kid gets hurt? He was all "well, what am I supposed to do about it? Generators run out of gas". You know what, that is unacceptable. Like I'm supposed to tell him how to safely run his business. HE is supposed to be the expert and HE is the one who is supposed to come up with ways to keep his patrons safe.

I'm still shaking I'm so mad.