Sometimes I nanny. I was taking care of two littles the other day. The brother is 5 years old and his little sister is 2 and a half. We had been pretending a basket was a boat. I slid them around on the laminate floor for a while and made it stormy. Then I went to use the washroom and they changed the game.
“Let’s play ferry boat,” instructed the brother. “You get up on the dock and wait,” which, of course, she did, the dock being the couch. He slid the basket around the corner into the kitchen, through the kitchen, into the hallway and back into the living room, past the couch, where he said, “Now it’s a two sailing wait!”
I chuckled, since of course, anyone going to Vancouver Island knows this routine. Little sister complied without argument.
Big brother went around the same route as before, and as he came around the corner said, “Now it’s a three sailing wait!”
This carried on up to “Five sailing wait!” when I said, “How long are you going to make her wait? I am running out of patience, and I’m not even playing.” The boy smiled his little impish smile, which means he knows he is being a turkey. Little sis agreed, “Yeah, I’m wunning out of pasense.”
He went around one more time and said, “Okay, now you can get on the ferry boat!” When she climbed off the “dock” and got her legs and dress all tucked into the little basket, he said, “Oh . . . the boat is broken, you have to get out and wait on the dock again.”
Probably shouldn’t hire this kid as the poster child for the BC Ferries.
