Full Contact Hide and Seek

"We're going to play a game when we get home," Rissa says, in the midst of our after-dinner  walk.

"Are we?" I query.

"Oh, yeah," she says.

David immediately concurs.

"What kind of game?" I ask.

"Hide and seek? Sardines?" she jokes.

"I could get on board with Hide and Seek," I admit. I haven't played it since Rissa was little and she would hide behind the curtains, giggling so much that the fabric would shake.

David is looking pretty excited, but he manages to tone down a manic grin. "Hide and Seek would be okay," he says nonchalantly.

Once we're home, the three of us stand in the kitchen, ready to get down to it.

"Okay, is it Sardines or Hide and Seek?" Rissa asks.

Me, personally, I never played Sardines. With only three people, I imagine it's not as entertaining as, say, with 6 or more. "I'm feeling more Hide and Seekish," I say.

David rubs his hands together, already getting into the spirit. "Ground rules? Are we using the yard as well?"

"No!" Rissa and I say simultaneously. "Inside only!"

"Agreed." David now resembles Vizzini from The Princess Bride. "Who's it first?"

"I'll be it," I volunteer. "How much time do I have?"

"A minute?" Rissa suggests.

"Sounds good."

"You go outside," David says. "Face away from the house and count out a minute, and we'll hide!" He has turned into a 10-year-old.

I head out to the back yard and start my count. "One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three..." By the time I get to 31, I figure that I've given them way too much time already, so I skip the 'one thousand and' part and just revert to counting double digits out loud. I reach 60 and turn to open the door. "READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!!" I yell. My base age is now about eight.

I look around the main floor. Under the sofa, in the laundry closet, behind the chair and a half in the living room. No sign of anyone. I head upstairs. I peek in the bathroom - no one's in the deep soaker tub. All the while, I'm trying to figure out where I will hide for the next two rounds. I go into Rissa's room. I check the left closet both sides... nobody. I check the right closet, left side... nobody... I open the right side and move some of Rissa's clothes...

"Crap!" says Rissa. "I can't believe you found me so quickly!" She's bummed. 

"I mean, really, there are only so many places that we can hide in this house." I commiserate.

We head to my room and check out the closet and under the bed. No David. We check under Rissa's bed. No David. We head back downstairs and check in the laundry closet again. No David. No David under the kitchen table, or under the sofa or ottoman. He's 6 feet tall, and inflexible - he can't just hide anywhere. We both look at the slanted door that leads to the basement. The gravel-and-dirt-floored-may-as well-be-a-dungeon... basement. With cobwebs and musty humidity. I open the door and see dirt on the basement stairs.

"Oh, for the love of... The basement is disintegrating," I say. I want to close the door immediately so that I don't have to deal with the crumbling "retaining wall" that is shored up by what now looks like the bow of a small dinghy, but originally would have been plumb and square timber. Both the cats flash past me and begin exploring the tiny crawl space under the living room. I trudge down and sweep off the stairs, contemplating how much it will cost to shore up the crumbling foundation-esque parts of the basement. Fuck. So much for wiggle room on the credit line.

I peer behind shelving units. I look up into the crawl space under the kitchen. The mid-summer smell from the basement is pungent. I emit shudder/gag noises as I walk through a particularly wide cobweb.

"Is he down there?" asks Rissa.

"I'm not seeing him." I peer around once more and brush off the dirt on my feet and head back upstairs. We go through the entire house again, not finding him. When we start positing that he might be in the dishwasher, I realize that I may have to OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE his ass. 

My innate competitiveness does not want give up yet. I'll have to check out the basement again. I open the door. David is standing at the bottom of the stairs - grinning madly.

"Where were you?" Rissa and I ask.

"Under the living room," he says smugly, brushing dirt off his body. 

"Of course you were." But then I smile. "On the upside, you're the one who put the dirt all over the stairs, so I don't have to worry about fixing the foundation."

"True." He's fairly dancing with superiority at this point. 

"Okay, you're it now," I say. I'll show him. I'm going to hide someplace so unexpected, that he will NEVER find me. "Give us a couple of minutes."

He heads outside. Rissa runs upstairs and I look at the corner kitchen table. With the table cloth for coverage, if I were to bend myself around the corner bench, I could be pretty hidden. But I have only two minutes. Now, what I should do is move the table out of the way, situate myself in the corner and then pull the table back over me. What I do instead, is attempt to get my 53-year-old ass between the table and the bench - which doesn't fit. I am now wedged between the bench and the table edge and I can't move forward and I can't move backwards. 

I try to use my shoulder to heft the table to give myself some extra space to maneuver, but it's just too heavy to move with one shoulder. I have zero leverage. I kick out. One of the chairs hits the floor. He'll know that I'm there if he sees the chair. He's going to find me immediately. I try to edge towards the corner but my linebacker shoulders are way too big for the space I'm in. I'm trapped. I'm trapped, and time is running out. I start to hyperventilate. Three seconds later my hyperventilation is morphing into something much more panic-driven.

"Help!" I yell. "I'm trapped! HELP!"

"I'm coming!" Rissa yells. 

"HELP ME!!" Logically, I know that I'm not going to die trying to hide myself on the corner bench under our kitchen table, at least not in the time it will take to be un-wedged, but my flight or fight response does not know that. 

"HELP!!"

"Okay! It's okay!" Rissa is racing down the stairs to me. She tries to move the table that remains wedged on my hips and shoulders.

"OW!! OW!!" 

"Sorry!"

By now, David has heard my shrieks of terror and he yanks open the door. "What's happening?"

"I'm TRAPPED!!!"

"Oh." I can picture him trying to work out the geometry of the situation.

"TRAPPED!!" 

He too, tries to pull the table off of me.

"LIFT IT! LIIIIIIIIIIIFT IT!!"

"It's okay, it's okay!!!"

They lift the table and I manage to scramble to safety. In the aftermath of my near-death experience, I am laughing in near hysteria. David and Rissa are just regular laughing. At me. As I rightly deserve. 

Before we finish our three rounds of Hide and Seek, I have bruised most of my right side from my first failed hiding attempt, wet my ass from lying in the soaker tub and put my neck out trying to hide behind the living room curtains. David has scraped his body scrambling into the crawl space under the living room before almost suffocating under forgotten pants in the bottom of our closet. Rissa, a Hide and Seek champion, hid in her closet in relative comfort both hiding rounds, blanketed by her purple terry bathrobe. 

On the upside, the 1/2 hour game provided a full cardio workout for both David and me. Yes, our heart rates were raised mostly in terror and we required nightcaps to calm ourselves down afterwards, but I'm still calling it exercise.