The Martlet

I hung out with a two-year-old the other day.

My friend Danielle came to visit with her daughter, Abby. In the midst of studying for my exams (translation: watching TV shows on the Internet and wasting time on Facebook) they stopped by.

Abby tromped into my apartment in her bright lime green raincoat and informed me that she would be two in May, and thrust her baby carrot fingers in my face. Then she marched into the living room in search of further entertainment.

Pizza boxes, empty beer bottles, piles of week-old dishes. I rushed around, making sure anything dangerous was out of her reach. My roommate tried to teach her how to play Wii, but Abby didn’t quite have the co-ordination or the attention span. Playing fake tennis was not as interesting as crawling around on the floor and searching under the couch. What were we going to do? What do almost-two-year-olds do for fun? All kinds of ideas were thrown around — Victoria Bug Zoo, the museum, the petting zoo, whale watching … the list goes on.

As we went through the options, it occurred to me that I’ve lived in Victoria for eight months and I have done none of these things. There are parts of Victoria I’m very familiar with — Felicita’s, Element, Red Jacket — followed the next morning with Shine, Floyd’s, The Blue Fox. I know my bus routes, I can find my way around campus, I can get to work. But how have I missed all these other attractions? We headed to Beacon Hill Park, where Abby entertained herself for half an hour by chasing the frightened fowl around screaming “duckies, duckies, duckies” at the top of her little lungs.

We took pictures in the playground, we climbed a tree and walked down to the beach to watch kiteboarders. It was a gorgeous day. I couldn’t help but wonder what I would be doing otherwise. Undoubtedly, it would have been some combination of lazing around in my boxer shorts, absent-mindedly fiddling on my Mac and perhaps failing to convince myself to do some laundry or dishes.

Later, we went to Boston Pizza, where the waitress blubbered and fussed over Abby. She was provided with a booster seat, a cup of crayons and a paper to scribble on. While Danielle cut her daughter’s pizza into tiny mushed pieces, Abby contentedly ignored the lines and obliterated her page with a noisy mess of brown, green and red.

As a university student, the type of people I see from day to day is pretty limited. Other than the couple of hours I spend teaching swimming lessons, I rarely spend any time with anyone under the age of 18.

I don’t go to church anymore, which was the only time I ever hung out with anyone over the age of 50.

With my family on the mainland, it seems like 98 per cent of my time is spent with people my age, living the same life I am.

As I strapped Abby into her Ladybug car seat and waved goodbye, I was a little sad to see her go. It’s nice to be reminded, now and then, that there’s more to life than we sometimes give it credit for.