Day 629

I remember when I was a child we had one of those plastic pop-up tents that you could inflate.
It had four distinct sections - a boat, a shark, an octopus and a submarine.
Me and my brothers loved it, we'd chase eachother around those sections for hours on end.

We never went in it alone though.
It was a kind of unspoken agreement that whenever one of us went out, the others would too.
Nobody left behind.

My brothers don't remember why.
To them it was just a thing that we happened to do.
I remember though and the day we got rid of the damned thing was such a relief.

I probably should have warned my uncle what he was giving his children.
See, it wasn't just a kid's plaything- it had someone else inside it, always opposite you.
From one section you can't see the one opposite which is where they hide.

It's worse in the tunnels, from there it could be in one of two sections.
And you never know which it will be until you peer and see it peering right back.
Safest thing to do is get out and poke the sections to see if it pokes back.

That's why we always went in together, the three of us.
It meant that the thing could only be in one section and we could all see each other.
We'd chase it around, chase ourselves around trying to get it to leave.

No matter how many times we folded the playset up and stored it away, the thing was still there.
I wonder how my cousins fared against it.
After all, there's only two of them and they are so much younger than we were at the time.