Operation Shake The Baby

Last Updated on: 26th November 2022, 12:48 pm

My sister went on a Black Friday shopping trip to the States this weekend. I don’t know why people do that, but some combination of her, my aunt and my mom have been doing it for at least a decade now and no one’s been killed, so whatever.

I was talking to her for a bit before she left, and I asked her what she was doing with the nephew while she was gone. That’s Seppa, if you’re keeping track. She said that he’s staying with a friend of hers and he’s happy about it, but it took some work because he really wanted to go with her. How she did that work is the reason for this post, because I’ve got to give her credit for some pretty solid thinking.

Obviously, one of the main reasons she’s going in the first place is to buy things for him. You can’t just come right out and say that, because that’s not what she does. That stuff is Santa’s department. Duh. So she explained to him that Santa is sending her on a mission. He’s finding it harder to make every present and get all of them into the sleigh nowadays, because there are just so many kids. So he’s asking for mommies to go find some of the things on his list so that everything can still get done on time. I guess he tried the old “I promise I won’t look,” but that was dealt with easily enough by a reminder that if you see anything even by accident, it ruins Santa’s plan for you.

A mission for mommies. That’s good stuff. I need to remember it in case I ever have to explain it to another kid.

Thinking on that level isn’t something I remember our mom ever having to worry about. Half the time if she wanted to buy something for my brother and I she’d just throw it in the damn cart. What were we going to do, spy? As long as she could keep us from touching it, she was in the clear. And even if we did it was often in a box, so chances are we weren’t figuring it out anyhow. She didn’t have that same luxury with my sister, but I don’t remember her being all that hard to distract. None of us were, really. We were generally happy to not go shopping if we got to stay with somebody fun, and if we did go there was usually a group of us so as long as there was someone to get us mesmerized by something in a different department or to get us something from the candy machines, it was all good.

I don’t know if any of this means that young Seppa is already smarter than the rest of us, but it might. It seems like he’s already better with numbers at six than I am at 42, for one thing. That’s a low bar, but I think it’s also a good sign.

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