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Caged Tiger

It is painful to have to admit it, finally, but a tiger should not be kept in a cage.  He deserves to be let loose in the neighborhood, possibly to get into someone else's kitchen and bathrooms, and solve their latches.  

 Poor kid!  Locked up here.  Allowed out only on a leash (so to speak).  

 I spent all afternoon, today, installing those little plastic latches that stop a cabinet door from opening only an inch or so, until you press down on the catch, allowing the door to open all the way.

 I am willing to bet that before another grandson visit has passed, Jao will have mastered the art of opening the doors himself, and that I will have forgotten how to do it.  

 I could not have believed that, at 81, I would be installing so-called "child-proof locks" on my own cabinet doors.  Tiled floors are unforgiving, and ancient joints and bone-bends have long-since  lost their padding.  I cannot count how many times I dropped little half-inch screws on the floor, and had to get up to find them.  People have children when they are young, not just because their hormones are raging, and because they are handsome and energenetic and stupid, but because somewhere deep in our brains the experience of all of our ancestors is whispering that it is better to do everything early-on that requires rolling around on a tile floor.  Or a bed.  

 Age has its own pleasures, but I cannot remember what they are.  

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