Before we get to the story part of this post the reader should be conversant with some aspects of Pirate life.
We meets lots of peoples each year with this pirating thing. Sometimes its the same people year after year and sometimes its different people.
Remembering everyones face is easy but remembering everyones name can be challenge especially so if you have an inherited difficulty in remembering anything.
The Ships Secretary organises Pirate Petes touring schedule these days and presents it to him in the form of weekly worksheets.
It was not always so….The Captain used to ‘organise'(?) perhaps ‘book’ is a better word his own tours. Too busy doing shows or racing 150 km to get to the next show in record time to focus much on confirming dates (the way it is done now) is how we sailed. The result of that were occasionally arriving at a venue where no one knows anything about a pirate show. Investigations often showed the person who booked the show stopped working three months ago.
So that were the original reason fer knowing who booked a show before entering a venue so we had a starting point fer someone to blame fer a Pirate being in our kindy/preschool/elc/childcare centre/etc.
There’s a part in the show where if no parents are present the teachers are targetted to be the “shanghaied groanups” .
These are the props Pirate Pete needs on stage to pick up some stray laughs. Despite all the teachers doing their best to vibe off the children doing the selecting we knows they secretly all desperately want to have the shanghaied experience.
We select one, two, three or four children from the audience depending on the size of the crowd. Bring them to the stage, introduce them to the audience, give them all a high five to ease any nervousness they may feel being this close to a REAL Pirate. We then introduce the Captains Manacles to the children, placing a manacle on each child and sending them forth to find their FAVOURITE teacher, clasping the manacle around that teachers wrist and then bringing them kicking and screaming to the stage.
Now to todays story
Today at Mackay Cubbie House we arrived feeling comfortable having been here several times before and remembering having fun and surviving those experiences.
A check of the worksheet says we at the right place and its the right time and the show were booked by Lee.
The show were going along nicely until time to shanghai a couple of teachers. We picked out two childrens to help, we’d tell you their names but that would fly in the face of what we said earlier about not being able to remember anything.
We showed them the manacles, all going good, put them on (its at this point we lose some youngsters n have to rerecruit). “Do you have a favourite teacher? Good. Go and put her hand in here and you bring her back here to me”
In the interest of friendly conviviality when the childrens bring out their FAVOURITE teacher we ask the childrens fer the teachers name.
The first name today were Lee. People standing close by said they could hear a strange clicking sound coming from Pirate Petes brain as he processed that information and then gingerly enquired “Would that be Lee who signs the cheques?” (the last person Pirate Pete would want to shanghai)
A nod of the head………..awkward pause…….oops!…..no way back……push on…..and we did.
