michaelgcasey cartoons made with words

Tent Poles ©

By

Michael Casey

The girls came back from their aunty’s with a car boot full of treasure, so I unloaded it before with a double hoot my sister drove away. Amongst the treasure was a flat packed tent in a plastic bag.

It’s been sunny in Birmingham this Easter so obviously the girls wanted to try out the tent. So I unsealed the plastic bag, and threw away the instructions, doesn’t everybody? The tent was an igloo kind of design, there were plastic tubes that were ready for the tent poles,

The tent poles were more like the equipment Bruce Lee used to use, you know the sticks with chains attached. Though they were like giant chop sticks, with elastics holding them together and with a bit of metal too.

So I thought all I had to do was to thread through the 4 feet of elastic and chopsticks and then the tent would be ready. So I started in the middle and then tried to thread the poles through. I tried it this way then that way, and it was no use. The chop stick like poles wouldn’t and couldn’t  fit.

So what do you do in these circumstances? You try and find where the instructions were, the wind having blown them to the bottom of the garden where the squirrels lived. Perhaps if I gave some nuts or breakfast cereals to the squirrels they would explain how to erect a tent.

I looked at the pictograph and still could not work it out. So I went and had a cold drink before inspiration struck. Instead of starting from the middle and doing the splits all I needed to do as start at one corner and go diagonally over the middle and down the other side like a roller coaster.

Success, I did a lap of honour, the squirrels chattered, what an idiot this human was, obviously I didn’t eat enough nuts, I could hear them say.  Then it was just a matter of starting in the other corner and threading the pole though to the middle and down again like a roller coaster again.

The girls leapt for joy and hugged their fat panda like dad, I could not do kung fu, but I had threaded the kung fu fighting sticks, they had a tent and I WAS their panda like dad.

The girls gathered their books and used the tent as a reading room, the library is at the bottom of our street after all. Blankets and cushions were added to it. I went inside with a dad smile on my lips, this is what being a dad is all about, priceless, though sometimes useless as the squirrels might say.

The girls stayed in the tent all afternoon, bringing their cheap and cheerful tablet outside to the tent, Utube in the garden. Me, I retreated to the PC, see how many more people I could annoy on Linkedin. I had taken loads of photos of my tent puzzle, so I posted them on Linkedin, somebody said he expected a story, and yes right now a day later I’m writing it.

Later as the chill descended I brought the tent inside still with the poles in it. I placed it on the floor of a bedroom. So the girls ransacked the wardrobes for pillows and set up their next palace. The squirrels watched from the trees in the garden, at least the human’s small offspring were not as stupid as him.

Today we hung out he washing, this was my excuse for not bringing down the tent. The tent stayed upstairs on the bedroom floor. Like a tent for Bedouins tribesmen or Eskimos, either or, I’m not sure which.

The girls stayed there reading books and watching Utube. Perhaps they even watched Panda videos on the tablet. As for the squirrels they debated what washing was, a series of tents maybe?