When our youngest daughter was a few years younger than she is now, I noticed holes would appear randomly throughout our lawn. Upon discovering one for the first time I summoned her over to the scene and began to critique her choice of location for such an excavation. She politely listened to my grievances and, in the end, I couldn’t remain too upset with her. After all, she did help me limp back to the house so I could ice my twisted ankle.
Though I directed her to confine her quarries to the wooded area behind the house, our yard began to take on an appearance not unlike the lunar surface. Mowing the lawn became an effort of serious off-roading, especially when the lawn tractor became stuck in one of her larger holes. I instigated a new, and heartfelt, conversation with her. I intended to explain all the hard work that went into caring for the lawn. The treatments, the mowing, the rolling and why her holes were so destructive. Due to this lawn damage, I determined it necessary to bring forth the solidarity of my paternal powers and lay down the law. Although, in doing so I never expected to elicit a fit of crying over the lawn. To her credit, she was a trooper and patiently waited while I dried my eyes and wiped my nose so I could continue.
Not long after new holes began to pop up again, I decided drastic measures were required. I located and purchased several, large, detailed child psychology books and intended to employ them in preventing her from any more digging. However, she is young, agile and quick and was able to dodge everyone I threw. As such, I decided it was time to solicit professional help. After only a few meetings with the professionals the cause of my daughters shenanigans was definitively presented to me. Not realizing the psychological analysis of a child could occur so rapidly, I awaited the findings with no small amount of skepticism. “She’s a child!” was the response. Furrowing my brow I listened intently awaiting some additional insight, yet none came. “What a crock!” I hollered. I demanded to know why I should accept such a preposterous notion. The only reason I was given was that they had raised a similarly confusing child themselves. I told my parents I knew that wasn’t true as I never remember seeing any kids like that around our house.
After the most recent discovery of an exceptionally large opening in our lawn, I decided it would be best to try and understand her logic. I hollered out her name and shortly she came running over. Firmly looking her in the eye I demanded to know the reason for this recent excavation. She simply replied, “It’s where the metal detector said to dig.”
“Oh. I see.” She had me there. I can’t dispute logic like that. After all, that’s exactly what metal detectors are supposed to do. They tell you where to dig.
“Well, did you find any treasure?” I asked.
Hanging her head and kicking her toe into the ground she replied, “No. I don’t know if I’m using the metal detector right. Can you help me?”
“Sure.” I said, “Let’s go figure it out. First, please go get a ladder so I can climb out of here.”
The next morning, her and I grabbed the metal detector and ventured out into the yard. At first, figuring out how to use the gadget properly seemed a bit daunting, but then the two of us zeroed in on it. “See that?” I questioned authoritatively. “It wasn’t hard to figure out at all!” Looking at me through the side of her eyes, she teased, “Yeah, Dad. Once you decided to read the manual.”
“Oh hush you. The sun’s starting to set. Go get ready for bed. Maybe we can actually get some prospecting in tomorrow.”
The next day we wandered through our back lot, a wooded area that separates our house from many of the neighbors. As we anxiously waved the metal detector around we could almost see – into history – the treasure that was hidden here.
“Joe.. huff huff huff… I think they have the dogs… wheeze… on us.”
“Shut up… pant pant… and help me bury this loot. No one will ever… puff puff puff… find it in this wooded lot separating these homes.”
When the metal detector screeched, I began picking out the color of the curtains for the captain’s cabin of the new yaht I was going to buy. As it turned out, we had stumbled upon that most common of treasure…another man’s treasure – as this was most definitely my trash. Half a Reese hitch lay partially covered in dirt with weeds grown over the rest. The rusted hunk of metal seemed very out of place. “Joe… cough… the dogs are getting closer!”
“Hurry! Cover the rest… ahhh…. with weeds and we’ll come back for the hitch someday.”
Deciding it was in my best interest to not abscond with, what was undoubtedly, the booty of a couple of wanted criminals, I started to make my way through the woods. My daughter brought a stop to that, demanding we take our find back to the house to be hosed off. “Sweetie, I am NOT hauling this hunk of rusted metal all the way back to the house. Let’s see what else we can find.”
As it turned out, the hitch was not that heavy and I managed it back to the house collapsing from exhausting only twice along the way. All though, I did stop once to thoroughly inspect the hitch as I was sure the old truck was still attached. Once we got all the dirt washed off, I stood in awe of what I was looking at. The left arm was twisted and the tongue was just dangling. The hitch, however, wasn’t in too bad a condition. Thus my daughter and I directly put it into service where, to this day, it’s still in use. If I do say so myself – and I do – it’s doing a superb job collecting dust and cobwebs in the corner of the garage.
Deciding I didn’t want to be in the employ of my daughter hauling junk from the wood lot into my garage, I allowed her to continue her prospecting throughout the lawn around the house. Now that we’ve become proficient in the use of the metal detector, the excavations have been reduced to mere strip mines. Occasionally the metal detector indicates something of interest and my daughter and I will get caught up in trying to find it. The other night we were on to something when my wife came out to summon us for dinner. “What are you doing to my flower garden!” she cried.
“The metal detector said to dig here!”, I pleaded.
“You better repair that! Now, come inside, dinner’s ready.” She said through squinted eyes and tightened lips.
“Absolutely!” I replied. “Just as soon as you bring us the ladder so we can get out of here.”