Finders keepers, losers weepers.
I don't know which cruel genius came up with such brilliant poetry, but it's a mantra kids and adults alike seem to instinctively live by.
I'm always excited when my kids bounce into a park ready to fling themselves down the slide (or slippery dip, as some cutesy but sadly misinformed parents call it) but instead spend hours playing with the scraggy old toys other kids have left behind.
Kids show little regard for their possessions, which means playgrounds become repositories for children's forgotten belongings — abandoned trucks, headless Elsa figurines and jumpers permanently caught in thorny bushes.
Perhaps a symptom of having too much stuff, but more likely because they're forgetful and childish. Parents are left with no option but to accept that children will act their age.
I wasted a good chunk of my childhood retracing my steps
I was one of those absent-minded kids who left a trail of lost belongings everywhere I went.
Like Hansel and Gretel, but instead of breadcrumbs, my trail was made up of sunglasses, sparkly sandals, and a collection of things I had pilfered from Mum's bedside table (pen lids, safety pins, bookmarks — all the mildly frustrating things for an adult to misplace).
I wasted a good chunk of my childhood retracing my steps. While other kids were forging new paths, I was rummaging through the local pool's lost property bin.
The only thing worse than losing your undies at the pool is going home in someone else's, plucked from beneath the scratched goggles, deflated pool toys and unidentifiable lost curios of the public leisure centre.
My dad would tell me, "you'd lose your head if it wasn't screwed on", a turn of phrase that never changed my behaviour but instead led me to fail Year 10 biology, in part due to my belief that my head could be detached like a bottle top.
My children have become lost property scavengers
Thankfully my own kids aren't losers like I was (in both senses of the word). They're scavengers, picking through the cast-offs of the losers of the next generation.
Their instinct is to claim instant ownership of the items. And while I discourage them from doing so, I'm an environmentalist and see the benefit in reusing and recycling.
I hate to see perfectly good clothes and toys reduced to future landfill.
Why leave it to waste away when it could be entertaining my kids (for at least 20 minutes, long enough for me to do a humble brag post about what a great parent I am)?
While my two children insist that taking unwanted toys and clothes home with them is a morally sound and practically positive idea, I remind them that if it were their lost toy, they mightn't feel the same.
We agree on a compromise, a special rule to govern playground finders keepers: One can only claim dibs on an item after it's been abandoned for a certain duration.
Essentially squatters' rights, but I don't want to explain squatters' rights, lest my children start trying to unlawfully occupy our neighbours' houses while they're out.
Three days, we decide, is adequate searching time for the original owner of the found item.
It's also a short enough period that clothes won't transform into damp rags, and Elsa figurines will only have a perfunctory spray of animal excrement on them.
The rule worked really well. For a while.
The finders keepers rule in action ... it didn't end well
On a recent weekend away, my six-year-old discovered a dazzling pink tea set scattered around the swings.
It was the greatest treasure to have been unearthed since the beginning of the finders keepers rule.
The stakes were high. Waiting an hour for a grown-up is equivalent to waiting eight hours for a kid, so the mandatory three days' layover was excruciatingly long.
Watches were checked more frequently than necessary. Calendars were marked. Alarms were set.
On the third day, my daughter and I returned to the playground, ready to collect the pink tea set, only to find something our rule had not anticipated.
Another child was playing with it. She was miming a delightful tea party, pouring pretend tea and serving pretend cake on tiny saucers.
I felt a weight in my stomach. My daughter looked on in despair.
After some back and forth with the kid's parents, I explained to my daughter that her new nemesis had also been biding her time waiting to see if the prized lost property would be claimed. And sorry, they'd got here first.
What ensued was a full-scale tantrum that involved tears and her usual trick of flailing her body around and holding onto me by the waistband until my pants fall down.
It's a classic move and a great reminder not to wear trackies in public.
Ultimately she came to terms with the fact that both parties were playing by the same rules and that, as the saying goes, we were pipped at the post.
And fair's fair — it's a dog eat dog world out there. The cookie crumbled. Like it, lump it, etc. Finders keepers, I thought. And absolutely did not say out loud, "losers weepers".
Veronica Milsom is a writer, producer and broadcaster. Follow her here.
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