The game

Little granddaughter Olivia expressed some reservations regarding attending full-day public kindergarten in September. This was despite the fact that her older sister Lillian would be in second grade at the same school.

At the open house in August Olivia, never shy about expressing her opinion, was expressing her reservations to the kindergarten teacher. Ms. Poltkin, without hesitation, took Olivia to see the guinea pigs, Bob and Patches, who lived in a cage in the classroom. Olivia was immediately smitten with these small, smelly animals. When her teacher explained that the guinea pigs would need a home on the weekends Olivia was hooked. She immediately offered her house.

Unfortunately, the very young Ms. Polkin, unaware of certain characteristics of guinea pigs in the wild, had to find a permanent home for Bob shortly after class began and there was the terrible “incident” in the cage in the classroom. The less said about this the better. Patches would stay, a little worse for wear, and be rotated among the parents on weekends. Bob was sent to “The Farm”.

Olivia proudly took Patches home for the first weekend. She showed Patches to her parents, sisters, neighborhood children and her cat. She let Patches out to play. The cat appeared to be appalled, if cats can be such a thing. But, much to his credit, he refrained from jumping on Patches and leaving the classroom pig-less.

On Sunday Olivia’s mom Jessica noticed Patches was not in his cage. The children were in their rooms picking up. Jess searched for Patches but couldn’t locate him in the immediate vicinity of the cage. As she went upstairs to ask the children she passed the master suite and heard the plaintive cry of the captive guinea pig.

What, she thought, is he doing in my bedroom. No, that wasn’t right. The cries were coming from the bathroom next door. Still she couldn’t see old Patches anywhere out in the open. Where were the cries coming from exactly. She began opening drawers in her vanity until, lo and behold, there he was. Stuffed into the middle left hand drawer.

She took the shaken Patches to the children and demanded to know what was going on.

Olivia put her hand on her hip and while tapping her foot calmly stated that they were playing hide and seek and it was Patches turn to hide when she had been called away from her game to clean her stupid room. Now mother had completely ruined the game.