Humor: Skippy, the ambushed kangaroo

Skippy, the ambushed kangaroo

Imagine it is the Olympic Games. Eight contestants have lined up in the athletics stadium for the race of their lives.

It has taken years to get here.
Years of sweat and grind and sheer determination. Long days and nights of travel, competition and training.
In just a matter of seconds, though, it will be all over and someone will have the cherished gold medal.

The stadium is quiet as the testosterone-charged athletes, muscles twitching and eyes focused on the track ahead, go down on their blocks.

In that slow-motion time before the starter's gun goes off, the contestant in Lane One turns to the contestant in Lane Two and asks: "Um, do you know what we are supposed to be doing in this race?"

"No," says the contestant in Lane Two. "I was hoping to see what you did and follow your lead."

The contestant in Lane Three chips into the conversation. "Actually, I think we are supposed to skip," he says.

"Skip!" says the contestant in Lane One in shock and disbelief

Okay. Okay. This scenario probably would never happen in the Olympics. Skipping is not even a demonstration sport there.

But it happened to me today at the Father's Day races at my son Jack's kindergarten.

There were 16 contestants in our race - eight fathers and eight six-year-olds.

Nothing at all prepared me for what was about to happen, not even the race beforehand where we had to run with little beanbags on our heads while also balancing jellybeans in spoons.
Jack did the first leg and was close to the lead when I took over. Alas, I dropped both the beanbag and the jellybean and came in last.

I was not perturbed though.

No, I had set myself for the sack race.

I knew there was going to be a sack race because it had said so in a newsletter Jack had brought home from school.
Thus, I had been practising a lot on our stairwell at home.

Much to my disappointment, though, the sack race was canned this year.

I tried not to show this disappointment among the impressionable six-year-olds as I lined up for race two.

I was in Lane One, so did not actually hear the starter's instructions.

All I know is that the contestant in Lane Three told the contestant in Lane Two and I that we had to skip.

"Skip!" I exclaimed. "You mean like tra la-la-la type skipping?
I doubt I have tried to skip for more than 35 years and there I was, just seconds away from One, Two, Three, Go and I was expected to remember how.

It is now history that I failed to remember how (or at least the other seven parents recalled it sooner than I did) and I came in last again.

I later spoke to a teacher who enquired whether I had nevertheless enjoyed the skipping race.

"No," I said honestly. "It's much harder than it looks."

But I pledged: "Next year I am going to practise skipping before the Father's Day sports."

"You can do that," I think she said. "But we probably will change it and won't have skipping then."

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it