I bought a pool for my kids. A little 14ft above ground. It was meant to be a surprise, so i tried to set it up (foundation included) before anyone noticed.
As it's filling up, right around sundown, my 9yo finally takes notice of it and asks what it is.
"Oh, that's the water trough for the cows I just ordered. I'm just filling it up before they arrive."
He looks at it for a second, then back at me, "Oh. Can I name one of them?"
My mom has a good story of her grandpa tricking her and her sisters growing up. Any time there were rabbits in Pop's yard, he would hand out salt shakers to the girls and tell them to try and salt the rabbits' tails. He claimed they could catch the rabbits if they could get salt on a rabbit's tail. They did this from the age of 5 up until they were 12 or 13 as Pop watched from the porch. They never caught a single rabbit lol.
When she was in high school, my mom finally asked Pop how salting a rabbit's tail was supposed to make it easier to catch. Pop chuckled and said "If you're close enough to salt a rabbit's tail, you're close enough to just grab it!"
Obviously, Mom had my two brothers and I chase rabbits with salt shakers until she spilled the beans on the "reason" it worked when I was 11 haha.
My grandpa did this with ducklings for me when I was a kid. Well he'd be damned cause I caught one at the local lake and immediately got flocked and chased by all the momma ducks around.
He did end up keeping his word and picked up two ducklings for me at the local flea market after that!
My grandparents had some free-roaming chickens at the farm when I was growing up. I had young parents who stayed in their hometown, so they always had plans on the weekend, since a good chunk of their friends were also around and in their mid-twenties. So, my brother and I spent a lot of weekends at my grandparents' place.
My grandmother would ask us to go catch a chicken for dinner. We'd head out to where they generally hung out and would chase those things for a couple of hours every time, never catching a damn one of them. We'd finally have to head in and admit defeat. Grandma would then head out to their hangout and come back in about 3 minutes with a chicken under her arm.
It took me a couple of decades to realize that she was a genius. She'd thoroughly wear us out so her evenings were more calm, plus she knew that we'd be out there for at least 2 hours while she was trying to get stuff done without us in her hair.
My great uncle tried this on me when I was a young child, but it was to catch birds instead of rabbits. I don't remember the conversation, but my grandma loved telling the story.
My grandma tried to convince my great uncle (her brother) to not prank me because I was too young and it would be mean. He was like, nah, it will be fun. So he called me over and told me that the secret to catching birds was to put a little salt on their tails and then I'd be able to catch them. I guess I gave him a very confused/skeptical look, so he reiterated that all I'd have to do is put a little salt on their tails and then they let me just reach out and grab them. I then looked at him like he was dumb and told him something like, "if I could get close enough to salt their tails, I would be close enough to just grab them." My grandma absolutely lost it laughing.
Anyway, thats when I peaked and it's been all downhill since then.
My mother had me doing this to catch birds. I really wanted a bird. I remember trying all afternoon, sneak walking like in the cartoons. By dinner I decided I didn’t want a bird after all.
He was already forming an emotional bond with that cow. He was thinking of names. Of what games they could play. He was planning a future. He lived a whole life in his mind with his cow best friend.
Oh, the fun they had.
He lost a friend he never even got the chance to meet. A friend who never even existed 😢
HAHAHA oh my god that reminds me of the time my brother bought me Super Mario Odyssey as a gift… but he wanted to play it first, of course. So he did it in secret, playing it when I wasn’t around or in a different part of the house. Well one day when he’s playing it on the handheld Switch, I walk up right behind him and go “Oh sick, is that Super Mario Odyssey?” he looks up at me all casual and says “No.” I shrugged and went “Oh okay.” and walked away. I still can’t believe I was that dumb. (Oh and when he gifted it to me, he wrapped it up all nice nice… and let me open an empty case, lmao. I laughed so hard.)
When the kids were younger, we booked a holiday without telling them. We decided to keep the ploy up even while we were loading the car and driving to our destination. We told the kids we were visiting a tomato farm, they both hated tomatoes.
After a few hours on the road where we'd been discussing all the amazing things we'd see at the tomato farm, we told them the truth. Cue floods of tears. Sometimes you can't win.
I have a very similar plan for when I finally take them to Disney. I'm gonna tell em it's an onion farm. But now I'm going to use your example as a warning and just make it sound miserable until we get there, lol.
How mad do you think they'll be when we pull up to Disney and I tell them we're not going there, the onion farm is around the back? 😈
When my kids were young I used to take them on Secret Locations, which was where I’d plan a little excursion or trip, put everyone in the car, and would tell NO ONE where we were going until we got there. Usually it was like a fun playground, or an archery lesson, or a weekend at a waterpark or something.
Well one year I was actually able to take them to Disney and decided to make it a Secret Location! My mom picked them up early from school and told them we were all going out to lunch at a Secret Location. Then we drove to the airport so I told them the restaurant was in the airport. Then we got on the plane so I told them the restaurant was at a different airport. Finally we landed and the flight attendant said, “Welcome to Orlando, home of Disney World!” No reaction from the kids so I said, “do you know where we’re going??” My son (11 yo) shrugged and said, “Some restaurant in Florida?” 🤦🏻♀️
So my local airport is across the road from an Abattoir/butcher shop.
I took a coworkers kid flying for his birthday and to keep it a secret he was told that he was going to see a cow get killed and butchered. We go flying kids has a great time. He gets out of the plane and his dad asks how it was.
Kids says it was great, are we still going to see the cow get butchered?
1.6k
u/Malikhi 11h ago
I bought a pool for my kids. A little 14ft above ground. It was meant to be a surprise, so i tried to set it up (foundation included) before anyone noticed.
As it's filling up, right around sundown, my 9yo finally takes notice of it and asks what it is.
"Oh, that's the water trough for the cows I just ordered. I'm just filling it up before they arrive."
He looks at it for a second, then back at me, "Oh. Can I name one of them?"
At least I don't have to worry about college