PARTY OF FIVE
We have three children. When you cross the Great Divide between two children and three, the social commentary starts pouring in. The main gist of which is the old chestnut of moving from total coverage with one child, to person-on-person with two, to Zone defense with three. Personally, I never really noticed a fundamental change at first. I had already fully embraced chaos out of necessity. While we may not have been sent sideways by the addition of child #3, the shift into being a “Party of Five” was another matter, particularly when travelling. We no longer fit in a cab, a row of plane seats, a diner booth, a bistro table, or a hotel room. Moreover, three children, even spaced reasonably close together in age, will rarely all meet the various age/height/size minimums or maximums to allow for the family to participate in pretty much anything as a group. Every entertainment activity seemed intent on being broken down into seating arrangements that were divisible by two, and/or require 1:1 adult accompaniment.
We were not inclined to be dissuaded, however. Thwarting capacity and health & safety requirements became an art form.
“Stand tall”.
“Scrunch down”.
“Tell them you are nine”
“…twelve.”
“…sixteen.”
We would send M out to hail the cab and then from the wings descend on the backseat. C on my lap and my head tucked behind hers, we would pass for a single person. A mother-daughter Siamese twin. Eyes dutifully on the road, the driver typically wouldn’t notice until the end of the ride when any objection would only impact the tip. At every hotel the children knew from long experience to stay in the car while their father checked in and scoped the joint. Danny Ocean, aka “Daddy”, would return with a plan:
“Drive around back and I will pop open the rear exit door”
“Walk straight through the lobby take a sharp left and I will be there waiting at the elevator”.
Conscripting our children into these dubious, and possibly illegal, shenanigans was not the most upstanding parenting practice. But it taught them to stand tall, walk with confidence, and act like they belonged and knew just what they were doing and where they were going. This is arguably a skill that will serve them well in life.
At hotels, we would ask for a roll away cot, but typically they wouldn’t have them – likely because they were fully aware that this negated the need for us to purchase another hotel room. For a while the kids were small enough that they could all fit in one bed. This worked if you could ignore the incessant space squirmishes. I could not. C, being the smallest, soon got relegated to the floor. We expertly branded her being jettisoned from the bed as a bonus. Her pile of blankets was her “Nest”. Ever happy-go-lucky, she would snuggle into her Nest™, inches from the (not remotely clean) hotel room carpet and feel like she had won the lottery. This practice carried on until I dawned on me that C was taller than I was, which by all rights meant that I was the one who belonged on the floor. No amount of crafty branding was going to convince me that a couple of throw blankets constituted a bed. The gig was up.
Generally, we fared well in North America, or at least at the Holiday Inn Expresses that existed primarily to service house league hockey tournaments. The minimum wage desk staff would have no way of knowing if an extra kid (or dog) was in tow. They invariably have lost track of headcounts when they reached “way too many” (all simultaneously in the chemical bath swimming pool). Travelling abroad as a Party of Five was a different matter entirely. Once, in France, we almost got kicked out of a hotel in the middle of the night because they required a maximum of 2 people/room, AND every child had to be pared with an adult. That’s tricky math for a Party of Five. Another time, in Italy, we almost got kicked out of a hotel in the middle of the night despite being in a room specifically booked because it had five single beds.
Concierge: “Just because there are five beds in the room doesn’t mean you can have five people.”
M: “Wait, what? Isn’t that exactly what it means?”
After this I finally ceded the game. The next time we travelled I booked everything on the up and up. Only thing was that I forgot to tell the girls. When we were checking into a hotel in Switzerland, the desk staff asked C her age. C shoots me a look of utter panic and starts stammering “I am 13, I mean 17, I mean…” She gives me the bug eyed ???!!! look: How old am I this time? The hotel clerk was justifiably mystified by this (16 year old) child who apparently didn’t know her age.
But there is no rest for the age defiant. Life has turned full circle. We had officially hung up our hat on the age-scam game, just in time for the girls to immediately transferred their well-honed skills into an ability to use fake ID at University.[1]
I meanwhile, apply mine to getting the seniors discount at the drug store.[2]
————-
[1] You’re welcome.
[2] Apparently I am legitimately eligible, but I refuse to acknowledge that.