The People Puzzle

The other day, I crashed one of KC’s regular catch-ups with local parents and their kids over in a trendy part of town.  ’Round my hood, a discarded tyre in a large patch of mud is generally considered to be the height of playground architecture, whereas Over There, they have huge tracts of land dedicated to the protection of native plants, with elaborate wooden structures (wood not metal, which might affect your “chi”) that teach your children about binary numbers while they play. Or not, if your child attends a Steiner school. 

Anyway, we met up with KC and some of her friends at a place known as “The Billabong”. I should add that, if you speak McGeeze (a local dialect favoured by Tiddles McGee), you would call this place the “Bingo-bong”. Which would be a very interesting combination, if you think about it. 

KC did the polite thing and introduced me to a lovely couple, one of them holding a baby. Then two little blonde elfin sisters skipped up the path, holding hands and I got introduced to them as well. They had names that were alarmingly similar like Saskia and, er, Saskie.

I must have looked a little confused, because the dad said “Just call ‘em both ‘Sas’.”

Okay, I thought to myself, that must get a little bit confusing at home but, thank you, them practically sharing a name makes my life easier and that’s all that matters.

And then, I heard the woman remark to KC that they were only 3 months apart in age. And I thought man, that’s a pretty close age-gap… actually an impossible one…. And then I remembered once reading about twins born 2 months apart because one was born prematurely and the other one held on past their due-date, so maybe that’s what’s going on here. But then I looked at the girls and saw that, other than their blonde hair, they didn’t look that similar. In fact, the more I looked at them, the more I realised they couldn’t possibly be related.  Ah, I thought, maybe they are actually step-sisters, both products of previous relationships, which makes the baby the mum is holding the love-child of the new relationship. Okay, I’m hip to that, I concluded. 

And while I was thinking all this, I tuned into the conversation between the couple, which involved the woman asking the man questions about his work like she didn’t know what the hell he did for a living and I began to think, maybe they’re not, you know, an item. 

And then, after some discrete questioning of KC along the lines of “Who are all these people?”, it turns out that the man and the woman are just friends and the two little blonde girls are just friends. And I was finally able to match each child (plus a dog tied to a nearby fence) to the appropriate responsible adult and lo! It was like I’d been staring long and hard at one of those Magic Eye pictures, practically turning myself cross-eyed, and at last I’d been able to see the 3D unicorn.

Although, why don’t I just ask more questions up front rather than put myself through all that is anybody’s guess.