TWIN TODDLERS TAKE NO PRISONERS

It is a courageous, perhaps completely insane grandfather who escorts his newly walking twin granddaughters, who have in their short lives seen little other than carpets and adult knees - amateur toddlers, in other words - it is a grandfather heedless of hazards, as I say, who dares take such a fearless duo to a very large toy store.

I now count myself among that questionable number of men, and am much changed by the experience. As a result of my time in a toyland where everything happens at least twice, my hair is whiter now, and there is less of it. Say the word 'toy' and a tremor passes through me, though the shaking diminishes as the days pass.

As we entered the bigger store than they had ever seen, the cute-as-identical-buttons twins, who operate under the monicker "M and M" (they're about that easy to tell apart) or, more notoriously, "the Ms," at first toddled slowly and cautiously with what I initially took for awe, but soon realized was spontaneous planning.

Their big brown eyes were taking in everything and its exact location, how it had been placed there for their very own delight and so belonged to them and was theirs to do with as they pleased, as for example those delicately highstacked tubes of superglue, or those interestingly crunchy balsa wood airplanes over there. Or straight ahead, those smily dolls in cellophane-paned boxes. Fun to poke with a Hello Kitty ballpoint.

Though they didn't yet really know what all these toys were, they were surprisingly good at throwing them. Not much accuracy, of course, but with impressive speed and a savage abruptness. As, for example, the metal toy car being closely studied by M, as I could see from afar with her boot in my hand, was instantly ballistic, passing within inches of the brow of M, who had suddenly toddled out of a side aisle with a jar of model paint in each hand, and lacking both boots.

As you may have gathered, one neat tactic in the M's arsenal, in addition to their devilishly effective strategy of being so small while looking and dressing exactly alike, was to let their boots fall off. Not both boots at the same time: one by one. It's an evolutionary trick to distract the pursuer, much as lizards lose their tails.

I'd notice a socked foot and run back and get the boot, return and both twins would be gone (toddlers move at a feral pace when unobserved). In different directions, of course; they are not so foolish as to operate together. They know they can cover a lot more territory and get a lot more done if they work separately, in telepathic coordination. This is especially true in a big toy store with only one pursuing grandfather of questionable mental status, who within 5 minutes wants to take a nap.

After must've been a week of chasing up and down the aisles (amazing, the places a toddler can hide) the twins had had enough of their first grand fun experience to last me forever, actually. At our departure, i.e., me with one squirming toy-reaching M in each arm and two boots in each hand, like myself the store required thorough rearrangement and was impressively the worse for wear. The Ms, though, giggled all the way home, looking forward to our next trip, ha ha. We didn't buy any toys of course; they'd played with them all anyhow, and no way I'll have those hazards in my house the next time M and M come to visit.