A few things I learned after a play date with my cousins Max and Danny:
- Digital cameras, which are fine for shooting interiors, rocks, trees, mountains and people my age, don't have the speed required to capture a child.
- When playing with little boys from Ohio, one must be precise about equipment. Not a "bulldozer" but a loader. Not a "truck" but a combine.*
- Pushing two kids around in a wheelbarrow will wear you out long before it does them.
*Addendum: While playing, Max said that I could be "boss" and that I should tell them what to do. I suggested picking up all the leaves in the yard.
Consulting with mom later, I learned that "boss" is supposed to tell them to do any or all of the following:
- Transport the backhoe loader to the jobsite via flatbed trailer
- Offload the backhoe loader
- Spread new asphalt on the road
- Steamroll the asphalt down
- Transport the backhoe back to the yard to hose it down
- Pick up coffee and a donut at the yard to eat on the way to the next jobsite
- Transport the backhoe loader to the jobsite via flatbed trailer again
- Choose the front loader bucket or the back backhoe bucket to do the job
- Dig a foundation with the back bucket and dump debris in a dump truck
- Forget the backhoe loader then transport a crane to the stone shop to offload stone slabs from the truck
- Decide if we need to use the mobile crane or the tower crane
- Finalize the crane decision and offload all slabs in record time
- Start over.
"Note: All job assignments are given in a 'boss' voice behind a cupped hand i.e. walkie talkie," explained mom. "The worker is known as 'buddy.'"
Roger that.
LOL... that sounds just like my (bigger) little brother as a child. He was a little boy from Pennsylvania, though. And that was back when Tonka Trucks were made of metal rather than plastic.
ReplyDeleteThis made me laugh. Thanks for the geat narrative.
ReplyDeleteDanny popped out of bed this am all bleary and tousled, gathered his heavy equipment along with Bear-Bear and came to sit on my lap. He sleepily identified one vehicle as "low-low" (loader in Danny-speak) and I said, no honey, that's a skid steer, to which he shot back (now alert) "bohb-cap!" (Bobcat in Danny-speak) thereby correcting my generalization to a brand name.
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