Kid Amnesiac

Simon and I have a little joke:

“Why can’t Cambria do X [name of any random task],” I’ll ask?

“Because he doesn’t have any hands,” Simon will helpfully explain with a huge smile on his face.

Cats. Liberated from work by the lack of an opposable thumb; prevented from human play by the same.

Or, maybe not. Monday Simon and I got out Hi Ho Cheerio to play on the area rug in his room. Cambria loves this rug, so watching him sit down beside us came as no surprise. Nor was I shocked when he eyed the little plastic cherries sitting on their cardboard trees and attempted to swat one. But when he took his paw and batted the spinner? That surprised me. And when the spinner made a full rotation? That surprised me even more.

By the time he did it for the third time, I got out extra game pieces and had Cambria “play” with us. It was silly, for sure, but what did I have to lose by engaging in a little absurdity?

The game, as it turns out.

The object of Hi Ho Cheerio is to move all ten of your plastic cherries from your tree to a bucket. At the end of our experiment Simon had cleared his tree and won the game. Cambria had four cherries in his bucket. I had two. That’s right, I finished behind Cambria. Sometime soon, Simon is sure to tell a friend or teacher that his cat beat his Mommy at Hi Ho Cheerio. That person is guaranteed to chalk it up to a childish flight of fancy. But Simon and I will always know the truth and be able to share a conspiratory smile.