Hide and Seek

Posted on May 31, 2014 under Storytelling with 8 comments

Peek a boo. Alison sees you.

“Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find …”

Matthew Chapter 7

One of my favorite childhood games was “hide and seek”.  Do you remember the days when kids spent most of their free time outdoors?  Some would say that those were truly the good old days.  If you were “it” you hugged a tree and counted to ten while your friends ran off in all directions.  It didn’t take too much time or ingenuity to track down one of your buddies.

I recently played a slightly different version of this age old game.  We recently put our big old house on the market after realizing, once and for all, that the kids won’t be moving back in with us.   In preparation for visits from potential buyers we de-cluttered the house.  This being our third house sale, we consider ourselves somewhat experts when it comes to fooling people into thinking that we are always neat and tidy.  Like cooking a turkey dinner together, getting organized for a house viewing is a wonderful piece of choreography.  My wife and I each have separate job descriptions.  I do my thing.  She does hers.  And when I stray off course, a nod or a raised eyebrow is all it takes to get me refocused.

One of her jobs is to remove just about every vestige of well-used household paraphernalia and stash it away, lest people think we actually live in the house.  After a successful open house or private showing, things get a little testy as I play my private game of hide and seek.  Where are the aprons?  In the dining room closet, of course.  And how about the toaster?  Why, any sensible person would automatically look under the sink.  The salt and pepper shakers are carefully concealed in a cupboard, along with yesterday’s newspaper and a handful of screwdrivers.  It’s a good thing that we don’t have cats anymore – they are difficult to conceal.  It usually takes a few days of playing the Hardy Boys, but eventually normalcy returns.

There are other forms of hide and seek.  When I was single, I did my own laundry.  Still do by times.  Back then, all of my socks were white.  Nerd personified.  But I’ll tell you something really cool.  Matching socks was never a problem.  A package of 12 pairs of white socks would last me forever, and I never had to think much about finding partners for my socks.  This was BK.  Before kids.  All of a sudden, there was a sock explosion and matching socks became as difficult as figuring out how the Egyptians built the pyramids.  I was the designated “sock matcher” and once every two years or so I would round up all the singles, toss them in a bag and throw them out or take them to the Opportunity Shop.  I figured that someone else might throw in a similar bag and you might just end up with a bunch of matches.  But as surely as I did this, the mate of a recently discarded sock would suddenly show up in the laundry basket.

But if you’re really interested in driving yourself around the bend, try finding the right lid for your Tupperware containers.  It does not matter how many of these you own, finding a perfect match defies the laws of physics.  Even if the lid looks like it should fit, it won’t quite snap shut and you will tear the house apart trying the find the second half of the elusive combo.  I know some people have gone so far as to number their plastic containers and lids so that even a pre-schooler has a fighting chance of getting the perfect match.

And if this doesn’t work and you’re still trying to find the elusive lid, just try some unlikely place like the china cabinet.  It could be right beside the oven mitts that were hidden there during the open house.

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