Buccaneers

We took the children on an expensive one-hour cruise on Cape Cod this past weekend, manned by "pirates" - male and female - who coralled the children to the stern of the ship and guided them through the process of assembling a treasure map, which happened to be in the form of a rudimentary jigsaw puzzle consisting entirely of square pieces.  They figured out where, within Hyannis Harbor, the treasure was buried, and one of the pirates retrieved it, standing on the deck with a long pole designed for lifting treasures onto the ship.  There were many rituals, and much pirate-brogue in the air, and both piratey and Caribbean-party background music, and a mutineer who escaped to a nearby dinghy, only to be doused by a rowdy crew of four-to-eight-year-olds wielding ferocious water cannons along the periphery of the ship.

Eventually, the treasure chest was opened, and it turned out to contain very, very many little plastic toys which, to the casual observer, might look more like made-in-China party favors than Olde Newe Englande Treaure.  Each junior-pirate was instructed by the adult ringleaders to select their "bigger hand" - which was their treasure hand - and reach into  the treasure chest and take one handful of treasure.

It looked as if the salty treasure-hunters, including Ian, Daniel and Madeleine, were having a wonderful time, in spite of the criminality of their leaders.  But there was one detail which we missed, as observers watching from the prow:  apparently the pirates were actively encouraged to take only a handful -  perhaps a canonical handful - of plastic treasure.  And this is something that Daniel remembered after the fact, as he commented once we had gotten home:

"And my problem with the pirate place was they only let me have ten prizes."

Apparently, ten is a pretty modest limit for a young pirate.

(August, 2012)