What to do if your giraffe breaks its leg

I’m not sure how it happened really.  I’m pretty sure I was only tangentially involved, if at all, but it seems like all of my children are growing up.  One day you are standing there with one newborn baby in your arms, thinking that surely things can’t be any better.  Then the next you look around to find that there are 3 of them, and the grown-ups are outnumbered.  The biggest change though, and the one that I thought about when we were having dinner earlier is that suddenly, almost out of the blue, there are three extra people in the house.

When they are small children aren’t really people.  Just people-shaped blobs with people-like needs.  But imperceptibly they start to grow personalities, and then you’re surrounded by people.  People that have their own thoughts and ideas and who are concerned about things that would never have occurred to you.  Happily, for quite a while, these extra people are a very rich source of comedy, which almost makes it worth the fact that they are also a rich source of never sleeping, ever.

For instance, to illustrate the comedy thing.  There were vigorous and strongly held opinions being expressed about what would happen if we chanced to have a pet giraffe.  I’m not sure exactly how it started, but suddenly entire scenarios were being conjured about how this giraffe was going to be fed, where it was going to sleep and whose it was going to be.  This led to one of the more confusing parts of the conversation.  N was describing how it was going to be hers and it would sleep standing outside her bedroom, so that if it needed anything in the night then it could just tap on her bedroom window and she could help it.  S was clearly a bit confused by this and wanted to know exactly what it might need.  N, of course, had all the answers.

“Well, if it broke its leg then it would need me to look after it and take it to the hospital.”

Reasonable enough I hear you thinking, although there was no real exploration of how it would break its leg.  But then B had to interject with some grown-up common sense and try to explain how we might not be able to get a giraffe to the hospital as there wouldn’t be space in the car.  To which N immediately shot back;

“We’d put it on the top of the car of course.”

It was then that it struck me.  We were surrounded by actual people, with real ideas about how the world should work and who, in a pinch, would try to work out a way to get our pet giraffe to the hospital.  Let’s hope it never gets that serious, and if Gerry gets ill then we can just walk him down to the walk-in-centre.  I'm sure they'd know what to do with a giraffe, right?

Practicing for a giraffe