The Peek-A-Boo Kid

Today I had the unfortunate experience of having a 4-year-old kid try and play a game of “peek-a-boo” with me. He may not have actually been 4 years old, I didn’t check his ID or anything, but he looked to be in that range given my expertise of more than a decade of those type of bastards screwing up my toy store while their idiot parents looked on adoringly and completely oblivious to what a complete kneebiter their little bundle of joy has turned out to be. Sometimes it was harder to tell who was dumber, the parent or the kid. Just kidding, it was almost always the kid. Almost.

Anyway, the experience was unfortunate on several levels, but the most important level is that a kid actually looked at me as someone he would like to spend some quality time with. What a moron. I wish kids could sense the SOS signal going off in my head when one of them comes near me. It’s not really an SOS signal, per se, but more of a “get the hell away from me you prick” signal that I have tried to master over the years. Either I failed miserably at sending that signal or that kid was too damn stupid to pick it up.

The second level of the unfortunate experience has to be that “peek-a-boo” is NOT actually a game. It is something that people with less than optimal brain function use to entertain themselves when they have picked all of the boogers their nose is willing to give up and there are still 23 hours and 45 minutes left in the day.

Whoever invented peek-a-boo needs two swift kicks to the gonads if you ask me. I have decided not to put quotation marks around the words because it’s a pain in the ass and, more importantly, my left and right pinkie fingers. I will take a second to let you put your fingers on the keyboard and imagine what it is involved in hitting the quotation mark key on your board. Now imagine having to hit that key TWICE for the beginning quotes and the end quotes. Don’t forget to put your fingers on home row. That’s right fuckers, I type from home row like a champ. Sixty words per minute, sixty-five if I’m doing nothing but cuss words. Sixty-seven if I’m insulting a minor. I know some of you type faster than I do, but I also know that I insult minors way better than you do so I win. I also sometimes insult miners, but not very often because I secretly really like coal energy and I don't want it to stop coming my way because of my sharp tongue. And a miner who is under 18? Forget about it!

The concept behind peek-a-boo is bordering on complete insanity. Not just the kind of insanity that makes your friends like to hang out with you when you’ve had a few beers and there are sorority girls around. I’m talking about the type of insanity that gets you locked up in a place that Ghost Hunters will eventually walk around in during the middle of the night long after you are dead as they have an EMF detector pointed in your general direction while they ask you why your spirit hasn’t left the place that got shut down by the government when someone even crazier than you shoved a “Psychology Today” textbook up your old highway with little or no lube while you were sitting in the corner playing peek-a-boo with your pet sparrow or your imaginary friend Cecil.

I don’t need to tell you the concept of the game because EVERYONE has “played” the game at some point and I am willing to bet that you were annoyed with the game within 25 seconds of the beginning of it. It’s a lot like a WNBA basketball game in that respect.

I would also be willing to bet you figured out the secret to the game within that first 25 seconds, too. This is not a game that takes a lifetime to master. It is the exact opposite of chess or, to a lesser extent, EVERY other game that takes functioning synapses to play. I have a puppy that figured that game out before he knew it wasn’t okay to poop in the house (or in my car, or in my bike seat, or on his sister, etc.). This is the same puppy that is surprised to see me if I leave the room for 15 seconds and come back in with a different shirt on. If I try to play “peek-a-boo” with him he looks at me like I’m an asshole and continues writing whatever research paper he is currently working on for his doctorate at the University of Phoenix.

So when a kid who CLEARLY should have been bored with the game 3 years and 25 seconds ago decides he wants to engage a total stranger in a game that involves him hiding behind his own hands and saying “peek-a-boo” to me (I started adding the quotes again because I had a protein bar and I need to burn the extra calories as well as build the muscle in my pinkies so I can “hang loose” ambidextrous-style like a true local if I ever make it to Hawaii) I think something might be MAJORLY wrong with him. I just wanted to tell him, “Hey asshole, your stupid face might be hidden but I can still see the rest of your crappy person and I will only be happy when you learn to play ‘peek-a-boo’ in a way that makes your whole body disappear forever. If you could do that I would play with you once. Once.”

The smartest thing he did was play the game with me while I was at work. In retrospect, the kid really may not be as dumb as I think he is because heaven knows that if we were just randomly on the street and he started playing that game I would have pushed him into traffic or down a flight of stairs (provided traffic or a flight of stairs was handy at the moment) the first time he covered his eyes in my presence. Someone needs to teach that kid that hiding from strangers is something that involves your whole body, not just your eyes.

Amazingly, just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I can’t see you. What it does mean is that you will NEVER see the two hands that are going to push you into traffic where you can see that the nameplate on the front end of a Dodge truck is more than just a shiny representation of a clever name, it’s a way to extend your life.

Sigh, I’m just kidding, I’d never push a kid into traffic. Down a flight of stairs maybe, if they had carpet on them and a pile of laundry at the bottom. And the kid was wearing a helmet and perhaps a bear-proof suit. Or if they were playing “peek-a-boo” with me in pretty much any other garb.

Yeah, I said garb. What a stupid word. Wanna make something of it?

B!