The Hat and the iPad

Avery sitting with most of the Christmas presents I made.

A couple of days before one of my family Christmas get-togethers, I grabbed any available box I could find so I could wrap my handmade crocheted items and jewelry gifts. I was running out of options, though, so I grabbed my old iPad box for Avery’s gift, forgetting about the story I’d heard only days before:

10-year-old Audrey, Avery’s sister, had a broken iPad and she asked Buddy, the family’s Elf-on-the-Shelf, if he could fix it. Miraculously the next morning, the iPad was fixed!

4-year-old Avery, upon learning about how Buddy had fixed her sister’s iPad wondered out loud, “How come Buddy didn’t fix my iPad?” Mom and Dad exchanged glances. Avery’s iPad was graveyard material – waaaaaaay beyond the repair stage. 

Soooo, when Avery opened her gift from me, she exuberantly exclaimed, “I got an iPad?!” She was practically dancing in her seat.

She ripped open her present and found – a hat, a hand-crocheted hat. Biggest letdown ever, but trooper that she is, she didn’t complain. From other family members, however, I heard, “Way to go, Grandma, break a little girl’s heart!”

Oh, yeah, uh oh, I forgot.

Oops!

That event occurred on December 19th. A couple of days later, a little girl approached Avery’s dad when he was working a couple of towns away, and asked him if he wanted to purchase a raffle ticket for – some organization – I can’t remember what (there goes that memory again). He did, and then he forgot about it. (I’m not the only one who forgets.)

A couple of days later somebody knocked on the door to my grandkids’ home and when my son-in-law opened it, he found a stranger standing on his front step, holding a package for him. 

“You won the raffle!” 

So on Christmas morning, when Avery opened her presents and found another iPad box (I laugh just thinking about it), I wonder what went through her head. Would she ever again be able to trust that what she was about to open was a fair representation of what was depicted on the outside of the box, or was this another form of deception? I wonder if she asked herself, “Am I getting another hat?”

Afterword: When I met with a few more grandchildren a couple of days later, I made sure to write a message on the outside of their boxes: “Don’t be deceived by the packaging.” Good thing, because not knowing that one of my grandsons had broken his phone, I had folded his scarf inside an old Walmart phone box.

The Funniest Thing My Granddaughter and I Did This Week

Since her brother and sister have returned to school, only Avery visits me Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We attempt a type of school program, though at not-yet-4, she’s not yet very disciplined and I never force her to learn (she’s quite stubborn), so she learns in a variety of ways. We also play at the park and go to the library.

Avery putting on a puppet show for me at the local library

Yesterday, though, we did something a little different – we washed our hands with peanut butter!

Maybe I should explain. Avery, like every child I’ve ever met, loves to learn. Give her a puzzle and she’ll have it put together in no time. Give her a laptop and she figures out how to play all kinds of learning games. But in order for Avery to work in a workbook, I have to be a little creative. So yesterday, I had her bring her backpack to the park across the street. 

“After we finish one page, we can play,” I told her, so she worked on one page in her workbook while I planned on incorporating other types of learning later (Nickjr.com offers lots of learning games, and I have lots of games for her to play on my iPad too).

On our way home for lunch, Avery discovered pine cones high in the trees, most of which I couldn’t reach. But I found a low hanging branch, pulled it down, grabbed a pine cone, and allowed her to pull down another one. Unbeknown to me until I let go of the branch, the pine cone was saturated with a heavy, very sticky sap. I never pulled a pine cone from a tree before, so I didn’t know it would be so completely covered in sap. I usually find pine cones on the grounds – sticky, yes, but not that sticky.

Because I had one hand free from sap and both of hers were stuck together, I insisted she not touch anything until we made it home to the sink. When we returned home, I turned on the water with my free hand, poured liquid soap into both of our hands, and washed them beneath the flowing water. 

Still sticky.

So we tried bar soap.

Still sticky.

“Stay right her. Don’t move. Let me look online to see if I can find something that will help,” I told Avery.

And there it was, on wikihow, How to Get Tree Sap Off Your Hands. Thank you, Internet! 

The suggestion that sounded the most fun was using peanut butter, so I grabbed a jar, scooped out a spoonful of it, and brought it to Avery, who was still obediently standing at the sink. 

If you want to surprise your kids or grandkids and have them look at you like you’ve lost your mind, have them wash their hands with peanut butter. And guess what! Peanut butter worked to remove the sap!

We followed the peanut butter with soap, by the way, and we have vowed to each other that we will never again grab a pine cone from a tree. Better to pick up pine cones from the ground and maybe keep a small jar of peanut butter by the sink.

Drunk Wasted Guy

Every Monday and every Wednesday I care for three of my grandchildren. Avery comes to my home before her brother and sister arrive, because she’s too young to go to school, and Audrey and Nolan take the bus to my house after school lets out. When snacks and homework are finished, they have the option, in the Winter months, of playing on the wii, the PlayStation III, or the iPad – the OLD iPad, the iPad that is so filled with games that I can no longer upgrade it, the iPad that is so old that if they want a new game on the iPad, they have to get rid of an old game.

Naturally, as their grandmother and owner of my trusty old iPad (which still works remarkably well, by the way), I monitor the games they play. So I was surprised when I heard, after I asked, “What are you playing now?” this response: “Drunk Wasted Guy.”

Audrey is 10 and Nolan is 7. What kind of game is Drunk Wasted Guy? Who would create such a game? What do you do – give him drinks and see how fast he get wasted? What is this world coming to?

Grandma (I sometimes have to take myself out of the picture and refer to myself in the third person) was flabbergasted! 

I finally registered my distaste out loud – “Drunk Wasted Guy? You’re playing a game called, 'Drunk Wasted Guy'?”

That’s when the kids burst out laughing. What they actually said was that they were playing, “A Hundred Ways to Die.” Yeah, that’s so much better. I’ll bet getting drunk and wasted are two of the ways. I'm sure the game was based on the TV Show, A Thousand Ways to Die. I don't know. I've never played it. And I watched the show only a couple of times because another grandchild wanted me to see it.

Maybe my hearing isn't as good as it used to be – maybe I’m older than I think I am. But maybe I shouldn’t look into getting a hearing aid, because without hearing what's happening around me, I can remain blissfully unaware of how strange our world has become.

Four of my grandchildren appear in the photo above. They were playing – without electronics – at our Thanksgiving celebration.