I don't want to. I tried to play hide and seek with my wife and children at the grocery store, but it wasn't acceptable according to my wife. I want to be allowed to attempt whatever asshattery that pops into my head. As long as I don't put anyone at risk, I should be free. What do you think? Is your desire to commit general asshattery being repressed?
I don't have children and I'm not exactly a high-energy guy so hide-and-seek isn't something I'm ever likely to engage in. But I talk to my dogs (they talk back, but not everyone can hear them), I have a larger-than-life Kermit the Frog strapped into my back seat, and in general my wife and I indulge in a lot of silly stuff. Most people our age think we're hopelessly silly just because we still go to rock and roll concerts (got tickets to see The Cult tomorrow night, yaaay-uh!), but the kids there love us and treat us like beloved elders because we give them hope that they won't stop rockin' when they turn 65.
I think it's great that you teach your children that it's okay to be silly. Americans have gotten too goddamned serious! They sue each other over everything and they let the government tell them what they can do with their own bodies. Nobody can take a joke.
That said, a grocery store is still private property and the owners get to make the rules, just like you get to make them in your home. The problem with our litigious society is that if your kid knocks a 26-ounce can of pumpkin off the shelf while he's looking for a hiding place and it lands on his little pumpkin head, three attorneys will converge on you from the produce, bakery and dry goods aisles and convince you that it's your duty as a citizen to sue the owners of the store for something that was really his (and your) own fault. You have to understand that the owners live in perpetual fear of shit like this
because it happens all the time. So if you want to play a game with your kids, why don't you invent one called "Shoot the Lawyers."
More broadly, Americans have become complete idiots at risk analysis and management. They think that it's both possible and a good idea to protect children (not to mention adults) from every conceivable risk, no matter how small the probability and how enormous the cost and effort of protection.
Well no wait that's not quite right and this is the reason I call my people idiots. We just spent two trillion dollars, pissed away the international sympathy and goodwill our country had after 9/11, overthrew the only secular, pro-Western government in the entire Middle East, and are well on the way toward earning the hatred of one-third of the Earth's inhabitants, in order to reduce the risk of terrorism, which has killed three thousand of us in the last seven years. During those same seven years, drunk drivers have killed... wait for it...
one hundred fifty thousand of us. It would be so cheap and easy to curtail drunk driving, without arresting anybody or making the rest of us take our shoes and belts off before getting into our cars: Just install a breathalyzer ignition interlock in every car for about $150.
Americans are idiots about risk. Don't mess with idiots!
Public places are not acceptable for hide-and-seek with children because children might get lost for real. A few decades ago, in Germany, it was customary for moms to leave babies in strollers outside of stores for a couple of minutes; until, one time, a baby got stolen and never found.
Apparently Germans aren't any brighter than Americans.
One baby? Out of how many? What exactly are the odds? Is it worth changing the behavior of an entire society to reduce an infinitesimal risk to zero? You'd almost think our governments
want us to live in fear, because frightened people are willing to sacrifice their rights for security. I know the damned media do, because frightened people buy more newspapers and watch more TV news ("The News For People Who Can't Read") than contented people.
"People who are willing to sacrifice a little bit of liberty for a little bit of security are destined to end up with neither. And that's just fine, because it's what those people deserve." -- Wrongly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who said he had no idea whom he was quoting.