He was good … too good.
It was nearly impossible to catch him. So we ganged up on him. Maybe I should have felt a little bad fooling a five-year old boy but I didn’t. Dang it … he was taking the fun of hide and seek.
Jaron had outrun each of us … adult and child … and was perched on the horse gate. One move towards him and he jumped off and sped into Speedy Gonzalez action into the field. Running after him only pushed him further away. How could someone so small run so fast?
So we all banded together (three adults and four children) and made a plan. McKenna hid behind the open barn door and when I spotted Jaron, I walked into the building pretending to yell to McKenna Jaron’s location. Sarah would do the same.
Lulled into a false sense of security, Jaron inched closer to base – the picnic table just outside the barn door. He inched forward, stopped, poised to run, watched our faces, looked around, inched forwarded, stopped, poised to run, watched our actions, looked around and then darted towards base.
McKenna caught him half way.
Hooray! The game was over.
You may ask why didn’t we just declare the game over earlier and leave the boy in the fields, but we wouldn’t take defeat nor would Jaron ever accept that the game was over until there was the expected conclusion. It wasn’t over until everyone was caught. Period.
Just because someone was outrunning or outwitting us didn’t mean we could just give up. We had to honor the accepted rules of the game. Heaven knows I get a project or two that I would love to abandon because it stops being fun. But I know the expected result and conclusion so I keep running. And sometimes I ask for some help. In all cases, I never regret sticking it out to the end.
May 2010 be full of fulfilling projects and a super-size dose of stick-to-it’ism.
Jaron was too good at hide and seek ... impossible to catch
