I suppose it's to be expected when our house guest was all of nine years old.
Tom's nephew Oscar is one of the many Quake refugees whose school in Christchurch is still too damaged to open so he's been staying with his Grandparents (Grandma and “Old Grandad”- yep, even to his face) in Waiuku for the past couple weeks.
We decided to give the Grandparents a break and take Oscar for the weekend. Alarm bells should have sounded when we arrived at the designated dropoff and a weary looking Grandma barely stopped the car long enough to throw Oscar and his army of teddies in our general direction before she sped out of the carpark.
After the weekend I have so much more respect for people with kids and it made me realise that I'm not quite ready to embark on that life adventure just yet. Tom and I managed to get ourselves in many situations that if proper parents could have witnessed, they would no doubt shake their heads and mutter “amateurs” under their breath....come to think of it they probably did.
Feeding the child should have been the easy bit right? WRONG. Selfishly we decided to go to Pacifika for a delicious Island style lunch. It was only once we got there that we remembered a nine year old's tolerance for strange food is non existent. We spent quite some time explaining to Oscar why there wouldn't be any butter chicken at a Pacific Island festival...only to stumble across a stall selling it moments after we'd bought him an alternative (and apparently “soggy”) meal. Fail.
We also forgot to put a censor on the child. As we pushed our way through the crowds Oscar piped up with “Why are there so many black people here?” I wanted to die. To be fair it wasn't a racist remark, more just an observation and let's remember the boy is from Christchurch but still, it was awkward. It didn't end there either.
After Pacifika we decided to watch a workmate's Women's Softball team play their final. A particularly um 'built' woman stepped up to bat and missed. Oscar then loudly asked us why HE didn't hit the ball. A woman kindly turned around and reminded us that 'he' was infact a 'she', much to Oscar's amazement. Thank god we were sitting with the other team's supporters.
Being a twenty something and well versed in the art of biting my tongue I'd forgotten that children don't have the same filter.
So we'd experienced an eating and speaking fail- what next you ask? Toilet issues naturally. Tom was working at a fun run event on Sunday so we all decided to go and have a jog...along with everyone else in Auckland. Minutes before the race was due to start, Oscar declared he needed to go to the toilet. This would have been fine if there weren't 70,000 people, about to stampede, standing between us and the portaloos. Thankfully he settled on a pee in the bushes mid run.
Post run we were knackered and just wanted to go home, well two of us did. Alas it wasn't to be. By this point Tom and I were so exhausted we'd forgotten how to say no. We couldn't even manage a “we'll see”. Oscar was totally onto this fact. He probably guessed he could try his luck with anything after we spent what felt like hours searching Ponsonby for...Candyfloss (which we couldn't find- perhaps the PC healthy eating brigade have raided the joint).
Anyway at the finish line there was “the biggest inflatable slide in the world” apparently. Once Oscar had laid eyes on it there was no leaving until he'd had a go. An HOUR later the queue had finally diminished and he was rewarded with 4 seconds of fun. At that point we texted Grandma with the new- earlier- dropoff time.
Playing parent as an unmarried, childless twenty something is funny. Ironically it made me feel immature because I realised how inept I am at looking after anyone other than myself. I was pretty sure that Oscar saw us as playmates rather than adults but I was wrong. Apparently he'd whispered in Tom's ear asking when he was going to ask me to marry him. Before that he'd suggested we have a baby. Because that's what you do when you're a grownup.
It must have been confusing for him to comprehend that people who could be so old were still pretty much kids themselves...we just pay rent now.
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