The great adventure

Recently I was tasked with babysitting my two tearaway granddaughters while their mother went to her doctor’s appointment. As I sometimes tell myself, I am a forward thinker and a man who can solve complex problems; I thought instead of sitting in the car or waiting in a waiting room trying to contain two little whirlwinds, I would introduce them to the ultimate experience of casually walking through the aisles of the local Bunnings store. Well, we got off to a good start, dropping off their mother, there was some genuine concern from the two girls strapped in the back seat about leaving their mother. I talked over their alarm at leaving mum by describing the joy of being able to walk through this great big shop, where you could enter wide pathways that contained all sorts of stuff that we could look at and touch. I thought I was being very descriptive and equally vague about what this great big shop actually contained, trying desperately to get their attention off their absent mother and have them see and this great new adventure we were going to embark on. Pulling up in the car park, I continued to be descriptive about the fun they would have in this huge building, telling them about the eighth wonder of the world being here right in Rockhampton. On entering the building, the first thing that caught their eye was the shopping trolleys, deciding they wanted to ride instead of walk, I grabbed a trolley and deposited the girls in the appropriate spaces and proceeded to walk towards the tools section. Now this should have been my first warning, after pushing the trolley several steps, the little ladies caught sight of the children’s trolleys with their little flagpole, the eldest taking the initiative and jumping out of the trolley and proceeding to grab her own conveniently sized pushcart, not to be out done her youngest sister then demanded to have her own as well. Trying to manoeuvre my own trolley and keep up with a two and four year olds hell-bent living this new experience seemed well beyond my skill set. I corralled them back to the trolley bays, left mine behind and off we went, them leading the way zig zagging their way into the lanes in this cavernous building. I believe there is some latent gene that has been carried down via their mother after originating with their grandmother that makes these little girls oblivious to the wonders of the products that are stocked on the shelves. While I tried to slowly walk down the aisles, making sure to see every item on display and wonder how I could use this in the future. Building a mental checklist of the things that I wanted, going through how I could explain to my dear wife the many ways that these newly bought Items would make my life so much easier. My granddaughters were in a hurry, racing down the laneways, stopping quickly to grab some of the easily attainable items that were displayed at their height, then me catching up to them and spending the next several minutes trying to explain that they had no money to buy anything which meant that their shopping options were very limited. Of course they looked at me with faraway eyes, which again seems to be a trait that has been passed down, not quite understanding why they couldn’t take a 6mm notched tile trowel in their shopping trolley. Now this seemed to take some of the lustre of their shopping experience at bunnings, knowing they couldn’t put anything in their trolleys like the big people do. So once again, me being a problem solver, I decided to add a couple of items to their carts, killing two birds with one stone so to speak. Guess what, this failed to pacify them, with each now trying to explain to their bewildered Poppy that he needed his own trolley if he wanted anything from Bunnings. Apparently, their trolley was for their exclusive use and this experience was definitely not turning out to be this great adventure that I was so enthusiastically describing earlier. Fortunately, their mother called, and the granddaughters were now focussed on picking her up and lost all interest in the trolleys and shopping with Poppy.