When I last experienced grandchild deprivation, I suffered symptoms involving credit cards and Easter outfits for everyone through 2029. So, Grandpa cheered our scheduled grandkid time.

The six- and eight-year-olds slept in, and so did we. Whatever Mom fed them, I wished I’d had it when she was a kid.

Grandpa played Monopoly with the older boy, a self-confessed math genius. I listened to piano “concerts” by Little Brother, a grandma-confessed musical genius. Grandpa, who mortgaged all his deeds, defeated the fiscally responsible eight-year-old.

Later, Hubby asked me, “Am I a bad grandpa for beating my grandson?”

“Absolutely.” I crossed my arms. “Plus, think of the lesson you taught: go into debt, and you’ll win.”

“Just teaching him the American way.”

Before Grandpa taught more patriotic principles, I suggested we visit a nearby children’s museum.

Our grandsons climbed and slithered through the museum’s kid-size “ant maze.”

“This will wear them out,” I said smugly.

Grandpa high-fived me. We decided to put the museum in our will.

The elder grandson chose me, an obvious pushover, to supervise his further exploration. The younger tugged Hubby to a huge semi.

He perched behind the steering wheel. “When I grow up, I wanta drive a truck like this!”

I fled the vision of him loose on the interstate. The eight-year-old and I played games with giant checkers. (Grandma proved the loser he’d hoped for.) We banged on pipes, triangles, and tambourines at the music-making exhibit. I offered to dance to his newest composition, but he nixed that idea.

Instead, I sat while he investigated the miniature grocery store. I nearly dozed off — until I saw him wiggling a fake salami through the window of a play schoolhouse where an earnest little teacher was holding class.

I proposed, “Want to return to the ant maze?”

“Yeah!” He zipped to the top. “Come in, Grandma!”

“I’d get stuck. The Jaws of Life would have to cut me out.”

“Awesome!”

Thankfully, his brother interrupted, my panting hubby behind him. “Whoever coined the word ‘babysit’?” he complained.

In the maze, the hunter and hunted clashed about who should be dead.

I diverted their attention to a cage containing an enormous, fake reptile: “Doesn’t he look real?”

The boys pressed noses against the glass.

The “fake” snake raised its head.

I fainted dead away.

I awoke to “Cool, Grandma. Do it again!”

Hubby hauled me up. “Grandpa’s back can’t take it.”

Riding home, our grandsons’ subdued state confirmed that baths, a storybook and prayer would usher them to Dreamland. Instead, they exploded from the car like twin firecrackers.

Would we survive the night? Or the next day, when the next batch of grandkids arrived?

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Who wears out whom at your house?