We had an instance of this up in the Bunya Mountains. The family had met for a week's holiday and we had eight adults or adolescents watching three little kids. No worries, you'd think. But the trouble is everyone kind of assumes everyone is watching so no one does. We'd walked through the gallery/cafe and finally taken our seats at a table on the balcony when someone pointed across the car park to the road.
"Oh, look! There's a little girl walking across the road!"
It was our little girl. By the time we raced down the steps and across to her she was taking her first steps into the national forest.
So when someone asks where a kid is in this house we all jump. Some quicker than others. For the record, I'm the 'others'.
"Where's Sophie?" Tracey asked me as she came into the kitchen. Sophie is Miss2. As Tracey was working on her laptop I was in charge of the kids this afternoon, so naturally I was watching movies on my laptop.
"I don't know. In the girls' room?" I suggested, my eyes still on the screen. Of course, she wasn't. But that's okay, I had more ideas. "Hiding in her cupboard? Patting the dog?" I finally looked at Tracey. "How about I pause this and go look?"
A twenty second frantic search ensued. Miss2 is renowned for impersonating the crew of the Enterprise and boldly going wherever the hell she wants. Gates aren't roadblocks so much as speed bumps.
"Found her!" Tracey called out while I did a perimeter check along the fence. "She's sitting on the bathroom floor, naked, with Miss8's undies on her head."
Now you see we could have saved ourselves a whole lot of anguish if I'd just stayed on my laptop because, as I explained to Tracey, "That would have been my next guess."
No comments:
Post a Comment