Pig Hike
Don't think that Flippin' Pigs are just for coffee. They're not.
Just the other day I did one of those great things that you hope you'll be able to do over and over again. I went on a pig hike with my three and a half year old granddaughter.
A pig hike is very much like a penny hike. Do you remember going on those when you were a child? I do. When I was just six or seven my mother would send my older brother and me on penny hikes; the object of which was to walk to the corner, flip a penny and if it's heads go left, if tails go right. Theoretically, the random flips would take us kids far afield and out of our mother's hair for a little while. They usually didn't last that long even though Mom would include a sandwich and some candy with the penny. Back then penny hikes were little more than desperation measures for a few precious hours alone. Of course, before long we'd be back on the front curb sighing, "I'm bored!"
Things were quite different the other morning though. My little granddaughter was delighted to see me and as usual she was game to do whatever I wanted. Taking walks is always great fun to her. We started down the street and as we neared the corner I asked her if she had ever been on a pig hike. Up till then stepping on ant hills had been her main focus but now she stopped dead in her tracks, looked up and asked, "What's a pig hike?" I handed her a Flippin' Pig and watched as she examined at close range first one side and then the other. The game was on!
Everyone knows there are ways to rig a penny (or a pig) hike and I'm a master at it. Since I knew when I had to have her back home and since most corners have three or four choices not just two, it was all in the wrist as they say. When we came to the corner I called out the choices. Heads left, tails right. Straight vs right. Straight vs left. Sometimes even left vs back and so on. She went along with the game eagerly because she just loved throwing down the pig. She didn't know, nor did she care, that the game was "fixed."
But my little granddaughter "fixed" me. I had negotiated us around several blocks and we were once again at the first of our corners and only a half block from home. She was tired by now and knew just where we were, could even see her mother and little brother down the street, but still she was willing to play my game. Left would have taken us home and straight would have aimed us away from home. "Heads to the left, tails straight ahead," I said, as she tossed the pig down. It was tails but she reached down and turned the pig over to heads, looked up and smiled and started down her street to home. "Can I keep the pig, Grampa?" "Why, sure little pal."
You really know you've been on a pig hike when your little friend goes "oink, oink, oink" with each step she takes then says, "Grampa, you can be a boy pig and I'll be the girl pig and we can both go oink, oink, oink."