The Pumpkin Roll

My oldest brother has established a rule for his children pertaining to picking out their holiday pumpkin.
The simple rule is: ‘If you can lift it, you can have it.’
In my experience, children-especially the sneaky nephew-types, tend to come up with all sorts of ways to circumvent the rules laid down by the parental figures.
I know because I was a sneaky child. But that was many, many, many moons ago.

At first, the oldest and sneakiest nephew realized he could ‘roll’ the pumpkin up onto his body-without a lot of heavy lifting.

The others followed suit while impressing even the most skeptical of aunts. (That’s me.)

However, the ‘pumpkin roll’ became passe.
Newly instituted was the ‘double lifter’.

For some, the concept of the ‘pumpkin roll’ or the ‘double lifter’ was lost, amidst the simplicity of merely climbing on the giant orange objects.

That is, until a sneaky Gramma came along and showed the littlest how it was done.
This pumpkin had found a home.
Gramma had found a new manic intensity.
And we had all found a new source of blackmail.