Children’s Games can go Horribly Wrong!

I was looking after my friend’s children the other day and had to marvel that they had managed to turn my house into a devastation area. I was on the verge of really being quite annoyed when memories of my own childhood made me stop to consider the situation. All I was dealing with was a bit of mess which was nothing compared to the troubles I visited on the people who looked after me. I decided to cut the kids some slack and left them to complete the demolition of my home that they had started.

The Clock

I was very fortunate as a child to have a friend whose parents were millionaires and lived in a beautiful mansion on the south coast. One day whilst I was staying at the house my friend and I decided to construct a Hot Wheels racing track in the hall. Our magnificent creation featured a steep drop down the staircase into a loop the loop. My friend did not seem concerned about playing with metal cars whilst surrounded by numerous expensive looking antiques and so I did not really consider the perilous nature of what we were doing. After a few minutes I let loose a rather swanky bright orange racing car which shot down the track, traversed the loop and then flew several feet across the room crashing unceremoniously into a valuable grandfather clock. There was an awful silence as I turned to see my friend’s parents arrive. His mother exploded in rage but his father simply said “shut up woman it’s only a clock”. A rather large bullet dodged there I think.

The Stairs

Having irreparably damaged a rare antique you would think that I had learnt my lesson about Hot Wheels tracks but clearly I had learnt nothing as a couple of years later I decided to build a similar track layout down my cousin’s stairs with an even bigger loop at the bottom. I felt that this time there could be no danger as the front door at the bottom of the stairs would stop any cars which travelled too far. Things went well for half an hour and then a purple dragster model flew off the track half way down the stairs smashing through a glass panel, showering my uncle, who was seated below, with shards of glass. Oops!

The Garden

Miraculously I was not banned from my cousin’s house but things would have turned out better if I had been! A few weeks later we were playing with our Action Man figures but the bedroom was too cramped to construct a proper warzone. We decamped to the garden and a blank piece of lawn became our battle field. The terrain seemed a bit boring to me and so I retrieved a shovel from the shed and started digging. The new landscaping featured several hills and a small pond which was ideal for use with the Action Man dingy. We were in the middle of a tense manoeuvre with me crouched behind one of the hills when I looked up to see my Uncle red in the face with rage. Apparently he didn’t like his new water feature! We were promptly banished to the bedroom.

The Parachute

Now trapped in the bedroom the tank and armoured car were rather redundant and so we turned to the parachute kit. Our fabulous Action Man was armed and ready to go but we couldn’t get enough height for the chute in the bedroom. I hatched a plan to throw him out of the window into the garden. We could run down and collect him after the “jump”. I opened the window and threw the poor fellow as far as I could but it wasn’t far enough. The parachute worked well but the figure landed plumb in the middle of the conservatory roof. This resulted in my uncle spending a great deal of time and effort climbing up to retrieve the toy and most unfortunately smashing one of the windows! I was now banned from the house!

Kids

Perhaps my friend’s kids are not so bad after all. They haven’t actually broken anything (yet!)Anyway I don’t have a conservatory or an antique clock and they couldn’t possibly reach the collection of Royal Crown Derby porcelain could they?

Sally Stacey is an enthusiastic blogger who was very naughty as a child! She is currently writing on beahlf of UK Windows.