Thing 2 has taken to playing a game recently, which inexplicably delights her. It involves her diving into the van before me and locking me out. When I use the remote to unlock the door, she locks it with the automatic locks just as quickly from inside the car, and thus her dastardly plan to keep me from entering the car is set in motion. She is paralyzed with delight, and screeches with maniacal laughter, which radically interferes with her reflexes, and I usually manage to unlock the car and open the door without any problem. There are howls of despair from Thing 2, and then we go on our way. I don't quite see the fun in it, but I'm 46 and she's 11 and that might go a long way to explaining it.
She played it again last night, as we went to the grocery store to get stuff for the chocolate fondue, and as I didn't particularly care whether we went or not, I just went right back into the house. You should have seen her face; she was dumbfounded at how easily I was able to thwart her strategy.
Once, when we were at the same grocery store, I managed to befuddle her utterly, when I opened the back door of the van and got in that way. Of course, I discovered pretty quickly that it is really hard to close the door of a van from the inside; my muscles just don't function in that manner. Then I had to get over the back seat and the middle one, and wrangle myself into the driver's seat. Not easy and definitely not pretty, I can tell you. I looked like I had just survived a fight to the death involving spray starch and lots of empty Tim Hortons cups. Thing 2 was both enchanted and horrified, and more than a little impressed that I did it. ("None of my friend's moms would do that, I bet.")
My friend Kelly and I used to have a similar, brutal game involving the car, which we have tried vainly to give up, but just can't. This was before central locks were standard in cars, you understand. The game was that the driver would have to unlock the passenger door with the key first, and then it was a fierce race to see which of us could unlock the driver's door first. It doesn't seem too bad on the surface, but it was wildly raucous in real life. The driver was at a distinct disadvantage, what with having to run all the way around the car to get the tiny little key into the tiny little lock, while the passenger only had make a furious dive across the seat to pull up the lock. The driver would tear around the car, losing her footing and grabbing at antennas and squawking loudly and making everyone in the vicinity take notice, and the passenger had to avoid chipping teeth on the steering wheel or breaking a rib on the gear shift or bursting every vein in her head in her haste to get to. that. lock. It was incredibly unseemly. Try as we might, we could NOT seem to stop the game. We'd start to behave ourselves, and next thing we knew we were tearing around the car and flinging ourselves over seats and dislocating shoulders and mad at ourselves once again. Finally had to agree to just open the driver's side first. This game started somewhere around the late 70's and I'm not kidding when I say we still have to think twice when getting in a car with each other. (Kelly is the undisputed winner, when I once forgot myself and just....got in the car.)
Thing 2 is so delightful at the moment; she's still very much a kid and still so thrilled at this sort of carry-on, and more importantly, thrilled to carry-on with me. I've no doubt that playing stupid games with her mother won't be on the top ten list of "things to do" in a couple more years. So I'll enjoy it while it lasts, even if it does mean I'm stuck out in the rain for a couple of minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment