Is there a single human being, or animal for that matter, on this earth who has never played the game of Hide and Seek? I bet not. From the time we were infants and our idiot Aunt Bessie would play "Peek-a-boo" thinking we actually believed she went missing as soon as she put her hands in front of her face to running around the neighborhood hiding with our friends hoping someone would make it back to home base yelling, "Ollie Ollie Oxen Free" so that we could all come out from our hiding and go home for lunch.
The great part of this game is you can play it with only two people or, as in my childhood neighborhood, you could play it with a dozen or more kids. (Some of which you had no idea who they were because they had just been riding by on their bikes and couldn't resist a good game of Hide and Seek. I don't know if kids these days have ever played it out in the street where you had a "home base". The whole idea of the game was to not be found and to sneak back to home base where you stood yelling that ridiculous phrase "Ollie Ollie Oxen Free" which then magically released all the other players who had not yet been found. At that point everyone could return to home base and a new round of the game began. I have NO idea where that particular silly phrase came from. It probably started in the mountains of Tibet when the goat herd's mother yelled to her son Ollie to go catch the neighbors Oxen who had just wandered into their field of goats. What ever the origins it stuck. I have no idea if it was a NYC only phrase or if everyone in the country yelled the same thing when they ran back to home base without getting tagged.
If you think about it the entire game is sort of pre-spy training for our children. Covert ops and all that. What kid hasn't been caught in a game of "cat and Mouse" with their parents, siblings or hated neighborhood bully? If you broke your moms favorite vase she went on the war path looking for you. You knew if she found you it was all over and you are going to die ! Or at least get a good hard slap on your butt. To save yourself from this fate you found a good hiding spot and lay low until the storm passed or the bully finally went home.
The Man has often told me stories of how he would hide out in the pig pen with the pigs because his mother hated the pigs and would not go out there to find him when he was in trouble. I have seen the tiny house he grew up in so even if mom didn't hate the pigs I'm sure the pig pen offered more hiding places than his house did, especially if any of his six brothers were around yelling, "He's in the closet", hoping their mom would find him and take the pressure off of the rest of them.
Hide and Seek . . . a great game that keeps most kids entertained for hours until they finally realize you are just telling them to go hid just to get rid of them and you have no intention of looking for them. Some kids figure that out pretty quickly . . . In my case I would hide and then fall asleep or get distracted and be in my friends house three blocks away while my parents would have the entire neighborhood out searching for their missing child. It was a different world. Ah . . . The Good Old Days !
But now that I am mentally and physically returning to my childhood at a much faster pace than I ever thought possible, I get to play my adult version of this entertaining game. The thing is I don't get to do the hiding . . . I only get to do the seeking. With EVERYTHING ! There is not a day that goes by that I don't loose/misplace something.
The three most often "lost" items of mine are my hearing aids, my glasses and my phone. The phone is usually the easiest to find because I can call it from The Man's phone. Unless I have turned the sound off, which I do every night, so that my friends can't call or text me in the middle of the night. In that case it is a good game of "Where Did I Leave My Phone?". And that is exactly what the problem is . . . I have left it some place and haven't a clue as to where. This is also the case with my glasses. I take them off, put them down and then have to spend the next three hours trying to back track my steps to figure out where I left them. (Although the older I get the less likely it is that I am taking my glasses off for anything because I can't see without them. In fact the problem these days is I will go to bed at night and ten minutes after we have turned off the light I realize, as I try to roll over, that my glasses are still on my face.)
And then we come to the hearing aids. This is by far, the greatest game of hide and seek I have ever played. In the case of these little buggers I manage to "hide" them at least once a day and because they are so small it is almost impossible to find them. Just this morning I was sitting on the edge of the bed and went to reach up on the top of the tall dresser to get my phone. The phone was exactly where I had left it so that was no problem. The problem was that last night I had placed my two hearing aids right next to my phone so that when I swept the top of the dresser looking for my phone I swept one of my hearing aids onto the floor. I heard it hit the floor just before I said a few choice words. I got out of bed and started the search using the flash light on my phone. I immediately found the battery for my hearing aid but the actual ear piece was missing. By now I am cursing like a veteran sailor while on my hands and knees looking for the damn thing. Finally I spotted it on the opposite side of the room . . . how it managed to travel six feet across the room is beyond me but sure enough, there it was.
A week ago I lost both hearing aids in the middle of the afternoon when The Man went into the bedroom to take his afternoon siesta. I usually go in and lie on the bed with him and play games on my I Pad while he rests. When I do this I take out my hearing aids and enjoy the quiet time. This particular day I took them out after I got comfortable so in order not to disturb Sleeping Beauty I just placed them on the bed next to me. Once The Man was asleep I got up and went outside to get some fresh air under my favorite tree. When he woke up and came out I realized I couldn't hear him so I went back inside to "put my ears in". Except my "ears" were gone ! I looked all over the bed, on the floor, on the dresser, in the kitchen . . . NOTHING ! The Man came back in wondering what I was doing and I told him I couldn't find my hearing aids. The search was on. We looked EVERYWHERE but could not find them. I KNEW I had left them on the bed but they just were not there. After about forty minutes of searching The Man had a thought that maybe they had gotten wrapped up in his blanket which he had thrown on a shelf in the corner of the bed room. As he picked up the blanket something hit the floor . . . hearing aid #1. Hearing aid #2 was found shortly after on the floor under the shelf way in the back corner of the room.
You really would think that I would be extra careful with these little buggers since they cost SO much money but my love of a good game of Hide and Seek wins out every time.
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