An ocarina is an ancient wind musical instrument that sounds like a flute but isn’t. And that is exactly what happened with the ocarina that my eldest son, Big Boy Number Two, ordered. It sort of arrived but didn’t.

I’ll explain. But not too much as it gets confusing because there are too many foreign-sounding names like Zelda and Ocarina of time and Nintendo and Koji Kondo…In any case, suffice it to know that Zelda is quite the cult figure in the world of YouTuber musicians and any musician worth his clout should have an ocarina it seems.

When my son came to me and mentioned that he would like to buy an ocarina, at first I thought he was interested in breeding baby killer whales, but it turns out he just wanted to try another musical instrument. At first I was delighted because it meant I wouldn’t have to hear every single version of every single Zelda song (believe me there are many) on the piano anymore as the ocarina seemed small enough to fit in his room.

This having been said, having just bought a bass guitar complete with amplifier and lessons, I suggested maybe we share the cost of this particularly new contraption (I am also trying to teach certain money management skills and failing miserably but more on that later.)

Unhappy with the fact that he had to pay, he turned to his father, my husband, Big Boy Number One.

And the ocarina got lost in transit.

Now, the great thing about living with boys is that when something goes wrong, you, the woman become the most important person in their lives. And so it was that my son came to me and asked me to track and trace his lost ocarina.

I was busy at that particular moment and suggested to him that he go on the relevant website and type in the tracking number given to him by the seller. He looked at me blankly. I repeated, a little more slowly, but that didn’t seem to help much. I reiterated, getting a little more agitated by now. My agitation must have rubbed on him because he finally started jumping in his seat:
“I can’t do it, I can’t do it! I don’t know how! What are you saying?! Can’t you please just do it for me?!”

And he knew, at that point I think, what he had just done and his blank look suddenly turned to comprehension. His eyes pleaded with me but it was too late, mentally I was already composing my post. Still, I explained.

“You realize I am so blogging about this, right?”

In my defense, and in compensation for material, I did find the ocarina and it is now safely on its way home. Big Boy Number One is traveling and was not available for comment at the time of writing.