"What should we do tomorrow?"

"I don't know. The kids wanna do something different."

"What's it gonna be like out?"

"About 90.  Sticky.  Chance of rain."

"I know!  Let's take all the kids down to the Stone Arch Bridge by the river.  You know, where the Guthrie and the Mill City Museum are!"

  Now, considering that the three of us who planned this little excursion have, between us, raised 17 kids, you would've expected one of us, at this point, to have said "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."  But sanity skipped this particular meeting.

I love that the cousins like to hang out with each other, but it makes it hard to plan or do anything.  Don't get me wrong, we do stuff.  It's just always hard.  For instance, at dinner the night before, the kids wanted a sleep over.  We suggested girls at one house, boys at another; kids over ten at one house, under ten at another.  All suggestions were met with scowls and disappointment.  No one owns a house that can sleep all fifteen of the kids on hand. ("Gramma used to." Zack grumped. "Thanks for selling our house, Gramma.") We finally hit on this; kids over sixteen (there are three) at my house, the other dozen at Heidi's house.  Heidi can't count.

In the morning we all met at Heidi's house and loaded everyone into three cars.  Three big cars.  Heidi didn't come downtown with us, which proves that math skills have no bearing on a person's intelligence. 

We took this circus down to the river and parked across from the Guthrie theater, a beautiful, modern new building, into which all fifteen kids disappeared before we could scream "Don't Touch ANYTHING!!"

The kids all wanted to see the bridge to nowhere and Josie and Meg, who had taken a week long drama class in the building a few weeks earlier, knew the way and were happy to dash off with a stream of cousins trailing like  clouds of glory behind them. 

By the time we reached the bridge ourselves, Gramma noticed that the two six year olds were not with the crowd.  This immediately caused the rest of the kids to disperse," looking" for Molly and Vince.  Except for the kids who just needed to find a bathroom.  Or the kids who wanted to go down to the gift shop.  And of course, the kids who really just wanted an excuse to ride up and down the really long escalators. 

If Attila the Hun had marched his hordes into the lobby, the poor gal who works the front desk would've said "Thank God, you're here! Can you get rid of these kids?!"

We finally caught all the kids and chased them out of the Guthrie and into the hot, sticky day.  We all walked over to the Mill City Museum, which we didn't want to go into because no one brought enough money to get this crowd in the door and the idea of these kids in a museum was enough to give us hives.  So we all wandered over to the stone arch bridge.

We had five adults and we could've handled splitting the kids into groups who wanted to do other things, but that never works.  We have three seventeen year olds who are way too cool for school.  We have a fifteen year old who hangs out with the seventeen year olds, a fourteen year old who is joined at the hip to the fifteen year old, two twelve year olds who would follow the fourteen year old into a burning building, an eleven year old who can't bear to be parted from the twelve year olds, three nine year olds who need to do whatever the eleven year old is doing and two six year olds who have a burning need to be in on whatever the nine year olds are doing.

It's not a family; it's a gordian knot. 

"Hey kids, it's hot and muggy! Let's go downtown where you can't touch anything and we'll yell at you for two hours!"

"Yay! Let's go!"

 

What did you think of this article?

Liked
Disliked
No Opinion