Play Date

Theresa Oldham: "It is time to go home now?"

Theresa: Why are those kids fighting?
And will I get to do that when I grow up?

I went to pick up my play date (Michael) at Miranda’s and he was just finishing off a morning event with Theresa and Kalina.

Lurene was getting ready to go home.

I arrived at the exact moment when toys were being put away and coats and hats were going on the children.

Michael and Theresa were having a dispute about his penguin pair – a mother and a baby, which have never been played with.

 But mimetic desire had overcome both of them.

They were vying for possession, each wanting both of the penguins.

Kalina doing a dead weight flop in her mother's arms
to protect her penquin rights.

It is not that there weren’t plenty of other toys in the room, the best being a Christmas tree Miranda bought at IKEA – the tree and the decorations, all of which a child can put on the tree and take off at will.

Now that is a good tree – tinsel garlands, beads, hanging ornaments, all child proof.

But the tree wasn’t interesting either of them. Just those penguins, delicious because the other wanted them.

Alice: My biggest problem is sitting upright on the couch.

I walked to the car with Lurene and she tried to trade off a book for the penguin so that it could go back in my pocket and into the house.

And that is how I took Michael and a penguin for a walk later. The penguin just happened to be in my pocket.

In the back of my mind was a paragraph I read last night in the book Aging Well.

The author tried to say that old people can find as much happiness in hours spent with a grandchild, as they could formerly find doing hostile take-overs.

The author must have had his tongue in cheek.

Michael: "a pause for a picture
and then I am off to get both of those penguins"

My hostile take-overs were taking back and doing the jobs I had given to others.

.

Arta