Covert Training

You may be surprised to learn you have within you the makings of a secret agent. 

        

 Those innocent early years of popsicles and Play-Doh have in reality taught you the basics of subterfuge and intrigue. This is because at some point all children learn that life is often much simpler if parents are blissfully unaware of what they're up to, and thus begins a life of duplicity and guile.

            You won't score those extra cookies from the kitchen unless you first learn how to map a path across the dining room avoiding the one creaking board. Once there, you’ll need to open the jar holding them without the lid’s clang echoing through the downstairs. In the event that there's an adult within range who is able to counter your silent ninja moves with the hearing of a mid-summer bat, you’ll also need to add the skill of dissemination and distract that parent with a running commentary on the dangers of low blood sugar.

            After you’ve stuffed those five frogs back in their shoebox and shoved them under your bed in the nick of time, you look up with empty hands and wide-eyed innocence at the suspicious face framed in the doorway.

Or perhaps on your way to that friend who lives beyond the sanctioned one-block radius of travel you manage to catch the screen door before its usual gunshot-like snap of the latch. However, with the peripheral vision of an antelope, your mother turns at the flicker of movement.

This is where you add speed to your prevarication. She asks where you're going but your Keds are already pumping as you call out,  "I'm just going by Billy’s house!”  If you had stuck around, further questioning would have revealed that you would in truth be passing  Billy's house on the way to your real goal.

            This combination of dissemination and cat-like movement reaches its peak in the teenage years. By now your skills are so perfected you’re able to lift the car keys from where they rest in that terra-cotta bowl with barely a ping.  If you’re still waylaid on your way to freedom, your destination sounds not only plausible, but laudable – studying at the library, picking up that milk needed for dinner, filling the tank as thanks for yesterday’s use of the car.

            The electronic world we live in now has brought a new twist. Kids of today spend hours mesmerized by glowing electronic devices. I had never really thought about how many clandestine corners there are in my house until I had grandchildren. These were first used as good spots to jump out at an unwary passing brother, but they now have other uses.

With the boys' screen time limited and monitored, this Thanksgiving they could be found in closets, bathrooms, and behind the larger pieces of furniture.

As they’re playing those delightfully illicit games of MineCraft, little do they realize the training time they’re saving MI 6 or The Agency.