the imagination police
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Momma.”
“What honey?”
“Momma . . . “
“PinkGirl, what is it?”
silence
“I forget.”
“Okay, tell me when you remember.”
“kay”
“Hey mom.”
“Yeah.”
“I standed on my head in Tumble Time today.”
“Cool! Was that what you were going to tell me before?”
“When?”
“Never mind.”
And off she goes, singing to herself, clueless to the fact that she still didn’t tell me something she came all the way upstairs to tell me. She’ll be back.
Anyone with kids has had this conversation - maybe even more than once. Why get irritated? It will just happen again. That’s what kids do. Besides, someday, I won’t have these conversations anymore. She’ll be grown up, having a conversation in her own house:
“Honey?”
to which her husband will reply, “Yeah?”
“Hon?”
“What?”
“I was thinking . . . “
“What?”
silence
“I forgot.”
She’s four (and a half) and she’s gonna make me tired my whole life. Good thing she’s my daughter and I love her and her brother more than chocolate.
He’s not any better at the conversations, just different:
“FavoriteSon?”
nothing
“FavoriteSon?”
nothing
“Annakin Skywalker?”
“Huh?”
These two are so different. FavoriteSon, nine plays Star Wars with Star Wars toys, Pokemon with Pokemon toys. When he was younger, he played Toy Story with Toy Story toys, Tarzan with Tarzan toys, you get the idea. PinkGirl, his sister, can set up an elaborate diorama and construct a story line that has Buzz Lightyear marrying Cinderella in front of an (interactive) audience which includes all the characters from every Disney cartoon ever made. Left alone, you can hear FavoriteSon, the resident representative of the imagination police, saying, “PinkGirl, you can’t do that.” to which PinkGirl will reply, “Yuh Huh.”
He has no authority here.
