Piles of Pillows
We visited some old friends the other day and their daughter, maybe she's 12, started talking about the time she and her brother came over to our house. My niece and nephew and a few other kids were there too. We took all the pillows off the couch and the beds and the chairs. We made a huge pile of pillows. It was epic. And then Tom and I ran around and captured all the kids one by one and tossed them into the pile.
This went down I'm going to say 8 or 9 years ago. Meaning 80% of our friends' daughter's life ago.
At the time, I regretted the whole thing fairly instantly. It was a big ruckus and although no one was permanently injured, we caused certain children to go airborne for longer than they had clearly ever been airborne before.
It occurred to me that not all children are used to being flung into a huge pile of pillows.
Our sense of normal had been warped by my niece and nephew, who we had actively been tossing about since they were just bundles in diapers. I still recall my nephew's huge booming baby laugh when we played a little game called "hammock in a hurricane" or all the giggles when we flipped my niece around or rolled them both up in blankets like burritos and then unrolled them so fast they would go spinning across the living room.
It was, "More! More! More!" for literally hours on end. I had some powerful biceps during those years.
But that one time with the pile of pillows 8 or 9 years ago, that was the last time our friends brought their kids over to our house, Which kind of sealed my understanding our fun activity judgement error.
So it took me by surprise to hear our friends' kid talk about how, almost a decade later, she still remembered that particular day and how much fun it was and how the next day, she and her brother made their own pile of pillows at home.
This went down I'm going to say 8 or 9 years ago. Meaning 80% of our friends' daughter's life ago.
At the time, I regretted the whole thing fairly instantly. It was a big ruckus and although no one was permanently injured, we caused certain children to go airborne for longer than they had clearly ever been airborne before.
It occurred to me that not all children are used to being flung into a huge pile of pillows.
Our sense of normal had been warped by my niece and nephew, who we had actively been tossing about since they were just bundles in diapers. I still recall my nephew's huge booming baby laugh when we played a little game called "hammock in a hurricane" or all the giggles when we flipped my niece around or rolled them both up in blankets like burritos and then unrolled them so fast they would go spinning across the living room.
It was, "More! More! More!" for literally hours on end. I had some powerful biceps during those years.
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| Exhausted after hours of pillow tossing |
But that one time with the pile of pillows 8 or 9 years ago, that was the last time our friends brought their kids over to our house, Which kind of sealed my understanding our fun activity judgement error.
So it took me by surprise to hear our friends' kid talk about how, almost a decade later, she still remembered that particular day and how much fun it was and how the next day, she and her brother made their own pile of pillows at home.
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