Parents Fighting In Public

2026-07-28

This happened a few weeks ago now so the details are a little more foggy. My lovely wife Sneha and I went to a small trip, a driving trip to Petaluma. Sneha did all of the planning and I just supported, we drove with our two kids and a ton of luggage north of the bay. We woke up on Friday morning, ate breakfast quickly, and left.

And the first place we stopped was ‘Train Town’. It is a little amusement park and by the time we got there a line had already materialized. I think the place opened at 9 AM or something like that and we were there at 8:50 AM. The parking lot wasn’t quite full so we found a place to park but we waited in the long line. This was around 4th of July time so everyone had the idea to go to ‘Train Town’.

And ‘Train Town’ was nice, our oldest went on rides. But the most interesting (or saddest depending on how you think about it) is that there is this one large train that comes through the park. Everyone buys tickets for it but it isn’t super organized like Disneyland or anything so when the train parks the old group shuffles off and the new group bum rushes the train. Also the train comes once every 30 minutes or something.

And during one of these shuffles a group gets off, another group gets on and I guess half of a family gets on the train but the other half doesn’t. And this dad looses it, he starts to cuss out the family sitting behind (or in front I am not sure) that look his family’s train seats. And he is sweating and throwing f-bombs, someone steps in and tells him to calm down. He keeps swearing for a few minutes. Everyone looks at him. It was a wild minute or two. And then the train leaves, I guess his other half of his family has to wait.

And then later, we were in the pool with the kids. Both of our kids really enjoy the pool. Our oldest is getting better at swimming and is taking a bunch of lessons. Our youngest is just splashing around but he is enjoying as long as he is held. And as we we chilling a woman came up to another woman and said something to the effect of: ‘Did you daughter talk shit about me and my son, well dont let her disrespect us. We don’t take any disrespect.’ And that was the altercation, and that was that. We continued to play in the pool.

It was a bit of a weekend, I think some people got pushed to their limits on the trip. I feel it was a mix of people acting trashy and people being stressed on vacation. Perhaps the strain of the heat, children, the stress of being on vacation. I assume that all of those things added up.

I am also more stressed out on vacation usually.

-Gary