It was all Panda’s Idea!

“Panda! Panda wake up!” I fairly shouted. “I just thought of an idea! Let’s play hide-and-seek!”  “Dude,” Panda replied. “The last time we played hide-and-seek I hid so well you fell asleep looking for me!” “Ummm, no,” I corrected him. “The last time we played I fell asleep because I hid so well I got bored waiting for YOU to find ME! I’m really good at this you know!”

“Whatever,” said Panda sleepily. “Okay, let’s go. You’re IT!”

So we played hide-and-seek, but we always found each other.

“Ready or not, here I come!”

 I guess we already knew each other’s favorite hiding places. Then it was Panda’s turn to be “It” again.

“OK Panda, don’t peek! Keep counting!” I ordered. “He’ll never find me now,” I said to myself. I had found a hiding place we had both forgotten about! Little did I know about the secret passageway at the back of the box tower…

Now you know Panda and I are best friends, and I would never do anything to lead him astray. But that is just what I did, because when he did find me… well, suffice it to say, we weren’t in Kansas anymore! (Not that we ever were. It’s a figure of speech I’ve heard Mom use before.) And speaking of Mom…was she ever going to be mad when she found out where we went!

The first thing we saw when we opened the door at the end of the passageway was a living room with two little girls in it. And they had a ton of toys! Panda fit right in, but I felt a little out of place. “Let’s go,” I whispered to Panda. “This is getting a little too weird…”

Panda agreed, so we decided to go outside. It was snowing! We only stayed out a little while because we were getting cold. We had no idea where we were, but we knew it wasn’t Fresno in July! We decided to keep going through another door in the passageway.

This had to be the strangest game of hide-and-seek we’d ever played! Don’t know who these people were, but they said we could get in their family photograph as long as we stood really, really still. I think if Panda had noticed the big dog sleeping in front of the house he might have been scared. Good thing I didn’t see it either!Since everybody thought we were so photogenic, I got to be in another family photo. I heard somebody say it was 1941, whatever that means. Then we met up with a guy who said his name was George. Somehow that name, and the uniform, rang a bell with me…but I couldn’t remember where I had seen him before. I think it was at Grandma’s house at Christmas…Anyway he had some babies, so we just jumped in and they took our picture too!George was pretty nice. He even gave us a ride on his motorcycle. It was pretty scary, though not quite as scary as flying a plane.

After our motorcycle ride we got to play with a really pretty girl, who had a dog and some baby chicks on her lap! You have to look really carefully to see the dog, because I’m kind of covering him up. Dogs, after all, are not that photogenic anyway.

Then we met these people. They said we were in Crookston, Minnesota. Unlike the girl with the baby chicks, this little girl couldn’t hold me because she was holding this huge white cat. I think his name was Timothy. Or Titus. Or Philemon, no, wait…maybe it was just Timothy Titus. I had heard about him somewhere…but to be honest I don’t actually know if that’s him…

Then All of a Sudden…..

…We heard a loud THUMP and it seemed like we had landed back in our own house! What a relief! We’d been getting hungry and sleepy. Plus we thought Mom would be worried. But, as usual, she was busy typing something on the computer.