Granddaughters

“Poppy, come play with me!  I’m bored!”, she said.

I’m the last resort, these days, if there’s nothing better on TV, and her cousin isn’t available to yammer endlessly over the facetime phone.  I accept my lowly status, knowing the near future will reveal to her my true nature as a dork.  I’ll take what I can get.  She’s ten now, and we all know what happens to them when they turn fourteen.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said.  “Let’s make a bet.  We’ll play UNO, and the first one to win two games wins the bet, and the loser has to be their servant, until mommy comes home.”  “Done”, I said.  “I’ll shuffle the first round.”

Of course, she had to summarize the deal in a written contract, with signatures in duplicate.  I explained that one signature was in cursive, one was printed, and she liked that, because it gave her a chance to show off her flowing signature.  This kid likes to nail down the details.  She’ll go far.

She won the first game in record time, before even half the draw pile was exhausted.  I complained bitterly about the obviously poor shuffle, until she pointed out that I had done it.

I came back and won the second game in grand fashion, having a run of blue cards left after she pulled a wild card and declared for blue. She complained that I must have cheated, somehow, as I went into my victory dance.

But it all fell apart on the third game.  I got stuck on blue and had to draw endless reds, greens and yellows before I could match the one on the pile.  She seemed to take particular pleasure in showering me with penalty cards that made me draw even more cards.  Her victory dance when she UNO’d out with a pile still in my hands circumnavigated the living room.

Now I was in thrall for the next several hours, and it did not look good for my dignity.  The first thing she did was write out a script for a scatological self-denunciation that she had me deliver as a rap tune, followed by singing a Christmas carol, all the while being recorded on her cell phone.  Heaven help me if it hits Youtube.

Then she handed me a puppet, a theme, a setting and a problem, and commanded me to invent a puppet show on the spot that fit.  Fortunately, my hand was too big for the puppet, so I wound up operating Harley Hog, the leather-jacket-clad yellow pig, as he engaged in a confrontation with said puppet, a fearsome dragon with big eyes.  We lost, of course.  In the nick of time, her mother showed up, and I was saved from further indignity and abuse.  I tell you, it’s hard being the adult around here, sometimes… :-{)}