The Parable of the Hider and Seeker

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, how long can a person hide in plain sight?”

Josh spoke thus:

A group of children were playing hide-and-go-seek.  The seeker had just finished counting to one hundred, and the other children were all hidden.

The seeker inspected the room.  There was nobody behind the couch.  The seeker didn’t expect anyone to be behind the couch, but the seeker also knew that behind the couch might easily be overlooked, and thus might be a better hiding place than one might expect.  The seeker hadn’t overlooked behind the couch, so it wasn’t an unexpectedly effective hiding place, but it didn’t matter anyway, because no one was there.

Checking behind the curtains revealed no hiders, and neither did looking under the couch.  Nobody would have fit under the couch, but not looking under the couch always left that nagging feeling that under the couch hadn’t been checked.  Since nobody could fit under the couch, the seeker was not surprised to find no one there.

There wasn’t a lot of furniture in the living room where the seeker was, but it was important to check behind and under every piece.  There was no one under or behind any object in the living room.

The hallway was equally devoid of hiders: there was no one behind the kitchen door, there was no one in the coat closet (which was usually a good place to find someone), and there was no one in the small storage space under the staircase.  No one was allowed to hide outside the front door, but the seeker opened the door anyway, to be sure that there was no cheater outside.  It was raining, so the seeker wouldn’t have minded finding a cheater, because that cheater would have beeen wet.  No cheater was wet, though, because no cheater stood outside.

The first door off the hallway was the home office of the seeker’s parent.  The home office wasn’t technically out of bounds, but no one would dare hide there, because the parent was home, and the parent was in the home office, and the parent was working.

The seeker was surprised, then, to see a hider standing next to the parent.  The hider gave the seeker a wave.

The seeker started to speak, but the hider motioned for silence: the parent was working.  The seeker’s sense of injustice, however, would not allow the seeker to refrain from protesting.

“I’m working,” the parent said.

“But the office is out of bounds!” the seeker protested, although of course the office had not been declared out of bounds.

“Interruptions are out of bounds,” the parent said, “I’m working.”

“I see you!” the seeker said to the hider, “You’re caught.”

The hider motioned that a tag by the seeker was necessary for the hider to be caught.  The hider moved to enter the office.

“I’m working,” the parent said.

The seeker stood glaring at the hider.  From the living room, voice after voice called that they had come home “free.”

“You don’t come ‘free,’” the seeker said, “I have to find you.”

“Find us in the kitchen, then,” one of the hiders said.

The seeker stood glaring at the hider in the office.

“Go find them in the kitchen,” the parent said.  The hider waived good-bye to the hider.

“There’ll be no cookies left,” the seeker said to the hider.  The hider held up two cookies.

“I quit,” the seeker said, and the seeker left.

“Thanks,” the hider said to the parent.  

The parent held out a hand and said, “We agreed, I believe, on a fee of one cookie.”

The hider gave the parent a cookie and a hug.

“Go,” the parent said, “I’m working.”