Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving.
As per our usual, we went to my parents' house. We'll go to June's parents for Christmas and New Years, she got enough time off for that. I've always kind of wanted to stay on campus for Thanksgiving, just to see what it's like (I understand that, as with Christmas, there's nothing formal planned, but sometimes there are informal gatherings), but it appears that won't happen. Every year when I have the choice, I choose to do something else.
My brother and his wife and kids came too, and all the various aunts and uncles, and all in all it was a fairly mundane good time. Nobody comments on my weird school anymore--in fact, I'm not sure my aunts and uncles know I'm still a student, since I'm not in a degree program anymore. When they ask what I'm up to, I explain I'm working part-time for a landscaping company while teaching a few courses as an adjunct at my old school. It's not un-true, and while it's not the whole and complete truth, it gives them a more accurate picture than the complete truth would. I've gotten much better, more graceful at explaining myself, just as Allen said I would. My immediate family knows the whole picture, and they've gotten pretty graceful about it, too.
So we ate and played and cooked and cleaned (not in that order), and not much that's specifically memorable happened.
Except.
Towards the end of the evening, after the aunts and uncles left (I mean the older aunts and uncles; June and I and Cecilly were all still present) and before the dishes and such started, the kids talked us all into playing hide and seek. Not that I needed much persuasion; I always liked hide and seek as a kid, and the only reason I don't enjoy it more now is that I've gotten so tall that it's hard to fit myself into any decent hiding space.
Anyway, I ended up seeking the first round, so I didn't need to hide anywhere. I expected to find my brother first, because he's bigger than I am and has the same problem but worse. Instead, I found him next-to-last. Where was he?
He was standing in a corner on a bucket facing the wall. I'd walked right by him dozens of times.
I've gotten fairly used to feeling stupid over my obliviousness at school, but I hadn't thought it would follow me home. I thought I was on vacation from that particular kind of mortification. I'd thought wrong.
Curiously, one of my nephews tried a very similar trick, standing still in a corner behind a bookshelf. He hadn't known where his dad was hiding, so I guess maybe it's genetic? But I found the kid instantly upon walking into the room where he was.
What was the man doing that the boy wasn't?
Answer; my brother wasn't behind anything. He was in a place where it was literally impossible to hide, and so I hadn't bothered to look there. That is, he was using Charlie's trick of being where nobody was looking, but he was doing it in a circumstance-specific way. Had I not been looking for anyone, and therefore focused narrowly on the kinds of places where it is possible to hide, I would have seen my brother.
Hmmmm.
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