I recently had the
pleasure of engaging in a game that I have not even thought about since I was
about eight years old. It is the game of hide-and-seek. Now what most of you
don’t realize is that as you get older, you also get better at the game. This
basically means that, by now, I could be playing on an Olympic level, as could
many of you. However, this is not exactly what happened; let me explain.
My daughter was
babysitting for a three-year-old, who, like all three-year-olds, is amazingly
cute. While I was standing in the kitchen minding my own business, he ran over
to me, careened into my legs, and exclaimed with glee, “I found you.” Not that
I knew I was missing, but being a good sport, I turned to him and exclaimed right
back, “I found you, too.”
Well, this set off
a frenzy of hide-and-seek. As I recall, there is a bit of a strategy involved
in the game, such as finding a good hiding place, being very quiet, and even
creating a diversion to make it look like you are hiding somewhere else. Well,
none of this applies when you are playing with a toddler. First of all, it was
his turn to hide almost every time. (Guess who made up that rule?) Second, one
of his favorite “hiding” places was the couch. Not behind the couch or crouched
down next to the couch, but on top of the couch, albeit with his eyes shut. On
the odd occasion when he did hide in another room, his response to my yelling,
“Ready or not, here I come,” was to holler back something to the effect of,
“I’m in the kitchen.”
Things didn’t go
according to plan when it was my turn to hide either. This might have something
to do with the fact that he told me where to hide, with which I of course
complied. Although my opponent and I were not well-matched on a competitive level,
we both had a blast, which I think qualifies as a win-win situation.
As many of you
know from experience, hide-and-seek is usually played according to the “every
man for themselves” philosophy. However, there are times when hide-and-seek is
played as a team sport. Unfortunately, there is sometimes a weak link, which
can lead to the downfall of the team. This leaves the seeker in the driver’s
seat.
Once when I was in
Lakewood, my children and their cousins were playing hide-and-seek at a fairly
competitive level. When my niece, Rivkie, who was the seeker, couldn’t find the
clan, she opened up the basement door and yelled at the top of her lungs, “If
you’re hiding in the basement, I’m telling Mommy because you’re not allowed to
be down there.” This threat, not to be taken lightly, was counteracted by her
little sister, Rochel, who hollered back, “We’re not in the basement, we’re
under the table.” Game over: seeker 1, hider 0.
You do sometimes
come across a competitor who excels in the area of hiding. In the particular
case I am thinking of, the child was not only successful at hiding from the
other children but also from his parents, neighbors, and local police. One
Shabbos afternoon there was a knock on our front door. We opened it up to find
a very worried mother who could not find her four-year-old son. She was
canvassing the neighborhood, along with other volunteers and Shomrim,
frantically trying to locate him. (Don’t worry, it has a good ending).
It seems that he had
been playing a game of hide-and-seek on the shul playground and was so good at
it that by the time davening was over, he still hadn’t been found. His mother
waited for him. She called his name. And then she waited some more. Realizing
something was amiss, she enlisted the help of the community. After a few hours,
she was told to wait at home in case he came home. When her son finally walked
through the door completely unscathed, she ran over to him, hugged him
ferociously and asked him where he had been. “I falled asleep while I was hiding,”
he answered wearily as he snuggled into his mother’s arms. Game over: hider 1,
seeker 0.
As our children
grow up, we sometimes engage in a game of hide-and-seek that they didn’t even
know they were playing. For example, it was my habit for many years to hide the
Shabbos nosh so that it wouldn’t be consumed prior to the sacred event, Shabbos
party. Although there are many strategies mothers employ in order to accomplish
this, mine was simply to “put it high up.” This came to an abrupt end when I walked
into the kitchen one Friday afternoon only to find my teenage son munching away
on the candy that I had placed on top of the refrigerator. Not only was he
surprised to find out that he was doing something wrong, he was also surprised
to find out that I hadn’t realize he was taller than the refrigerator. “After
all,” he said to me, “this is eye-level for me. I thought you put the nosh here
so I could find it.” Game over: Seeker 1, Shabbos Party: 0.
Now, sometimes the
hider and the seeker turn out to be the same person. I recently came across an
article while scrolling on our beloved Baltimore Jewish Life website about a
50-year-old Turkish man, Beyhan Mutlu, whose friends formed a search party
after he wandered off into a forest in Turkey in a state of inebriation. The
unique part about this party was that Mr. Mutlu was part of it. After wandering
around with them for a while, he finally realized they were calling his name.
After confirming that he was in fact the person being sought, the search was
terminated. He’s lucky he wasn’t also. Game over: hider 1, seeker 1.
I know the
opportunity for hide-and-seek doesn’t seem to present itself very often, but
let’s face it, most of us play it on a daily basis. The game as an adult
usually comes in the form of “where did I put my keys” or “where are my glasses.”
Of course, the most common opponent in the game as we know it today is “where
is my phone.” Now I’m not sure how many of us are willing to admit to this, but
I’ve played this variation of the game even when I was actually holding my
phone in my hand. Needless to say, hide-and-seek no longer holds the same
thrill it did when I was eight. This is why I have been encouraging my daughter
to babysit for that little cutie pie who was such an enthusiastic player. Take
it from me, it’s fun to be found even if you didn’t know you were missing.
