A Road Less Travelled

I used to love treasure hunts. Following clues–surely Sherlock Holmes (second only to Spock in my eight year old mind) would approve. The thrill of chase. The clever deductions–”Aha, I deduce that the kitchen table is…in the kitchen!”. The mad race to find the next clue (I don’t know where we thought it would go if we didn’t get there in time). I always loved treasure hunts, but it seems most of my memories are of making treasure hunts for someone else. Painstakingly cutting the paper to the proper size for the clues. Finding clever places to hide them…or clever ways to hide them. (Yet another reason that Post-It notes are cool!) So yesterday as I wandered the aisles of Dollar General, it suddenly seemed the obvious time for a treasure hunt. The children are not so much sick as contagious, trapped in the house most of the time, and cranky. I’m just starting to recover, but so tired of being cooped up that wandering around in Dollar General seemed to be a grand outing, and tending toward cranky myself. I found the Jackie Chan stickers that I’d almost bought for the children more than once–even on clearance I couldn’t quite bring myself to spend the money on a whim. But now it was an occasion, and the Jackie Chan stickers were a must! I debated over a few cheap plastic toys, but managed to avoid them. Instead I found a set of three little jigsaw puzzles also on clearance. Most of the books on clearance were just dumb. In comparison the book I picked out was quite amusing; in reality it was only passable, but at least it didn’t leave out chunks of the story in order to make the rhymes fit. In a wild crazy moment I added a word search book which wasn’t even on clearance. Before I even came in the door at home the alarm was sounded, “Aunt Raquel walked to Dollar General! She has a Dollar General bag!”. They had their suspicions, but I told them that it was my bag and ensconced it in my room long enough to hide the suspicious items before I let the children ooh and aah over my new candles (yes, the candles were also on clearance). I made up all the clues on somewhat less than painstakingly cut pieces of index card and waited for the opportune moment. Yesterday passed in a relative quiet, with no great explosions or upheavals. Today after lunch however, the children seemed a bit at loose ends. I announced (to their confusion) that they were all to go into the girls room with the door closed and stay there until further notice. Snatching up my clues I hid them quickly, and let the children loose to race about between Little Red’s tank, the bathtub faucet, the blender, and other such clever hiding places, until finally they pulled the treasure from the oven. Aside from a few stragglers who didn’t always keep up with the herd, and coughing fit or two that interrupted the hunt, it was just the way I remembered it. No, I take that back. It was even more fun than I remembered.