Tricky Kid.

When my friends and their 3 kids visited recently, we had the kids play in a downtown park under the supervision of one parent while I let the other parent in to the art museum for free to meander around inside and see it.

(Independently, both parents said that their favorite thing was being able to go to the bathroom by themselves.)

While the mom was inside – she went second – me and the dad took the kids to this giant reflective sculpture in the park, and the kids went nuts playing with their reflections.

When they tired of it and we were all standing in the crowd looking at the reflection and waving at ourselves, I told my friend the dad to have the kids cover their eyes, and then I went and stood behind them in the crowd and we played “I Spy” and they tried to look at the crowd through the sculpture’s reflection and find me.

The winner then went and hid in the crowd (the dad made sure the kids covered their eyes, and I watched the kid who went to hide to make sure they didn’t get too far away or even get lost), and then the process re-started with the winner of that round.

After the oldest son (8 years old) won a second time – he had won first, then the youngest daughter (5 years old) won – my friend the dad had the middle son (6 years old) be the person who hid.

And, when the middle son went to hide, instead of just standing somewhere in the crowd like everyone else, he went and found a really really fat tourist, and then stood behind that tourist peeking out... 

Then, when that tourist shifted or went to walk away, he would scramble and go run and find another fat tourist and hide behind them, and peek out from behind and look in the reflection at the other kids to see if they were noticing him yet.

Tricky kid!

It took like 5 minutes for the other kids to find him, when (in the reflection) he was peeking out from behind this 300-pound (white) man in a white straw hat, orange polo, and sunglasses, and with a big camera around his neck.