These kids today

I was babysitting last night for Maggie and Anna, two EXTRA-lively girls in the neighborhood. Maggie created this game for us where she played a ghost in a hotel called "Shangala" (phon. Shang-GAH-luh"). The hallway of the hotel was the hallway between her bedroom and her parents, and the bedrooms were the hotel suites. She was pretending to sleep in her room, and Anna and I were pretending to be guests in the parent's room. Maggie told us the entire plan before we started, so there wouldn't be any confusion or deviation from her expertly-crafted game idea, and so we wouldn't be scared when we saw a "ghost". She said that she had pretended to put on a white sheet and paint her feet white. Then, she was going to go out into the hall, wave her hands around, and say "OooooOOOOhhhOOOHhOOO" just like a ghost. We were supposed to act scared. Then, she was going to run back into her room and shut the door. At this point, Anna and I were to leave our room, go out into the hall, and go into her bedroom pretending to be ghosts and say lots of "OOOOooohhhhhoooS" and "AAAhhhhhaaaaaahhHHHHss".

Everything went according to plan, we looked petrified at Maggie's ghost impersonation, Anna even hid behind me when we peeked out into the hall. Then, we sneaked over into Maggie's room, waving and ghosting, just as instructed (except that Anna took the liberty of sticking her fingers into Maggie's eyes to try to rouse her from her faux slumber!).

Then, Maggie modified the plan a bit (without sending us a memo or anything--but we caught on) to incorporate a much-needed snack. She went into the kitchen and began toasting a piece of bread in a toaster that is made to toast only one piece of bread at a time. (I pointed out that I found her toaster amusing for that fact, and she feel on the floor laughing. The comment really wasn't that funny, but I like to think that I've got real panache with the little ones.) While we were waiting for the one-bread-wonder toaster, Maggie started talking to me in a thick country accent while Anna helped herself to an enormous carrot from the fridge--complete with greens on the end--and sat down on the kitchen floor. Maggie went on and on about how she'd heard stories that the Shangala was haunted, and she wondered whether I'd heard anything about the ghosts. "Ghosts!" I said, mimicking her country accent, "Now that's just a rumor. Where'd you hear about that? See it in the paper?"

Nope. She shakes her head.

"I read it on the Listserv."

Of course you did, Maggie, of course you did.