Friday 4 March 2016

Over-fertile imagination

I'm not entirely certain that I'm the only one in the Bear family whose imagination runs away with them to the point of managing to upset themselves. In fact, I might go as far as to say, I'm certain that it's either an acquired or hereditary trait, as LittleBear is showing excellent skills in my own self-destructive technique.

This morning, it being a Friday and therefore a day that LittleBear and I spend at home together, we played in bed before getting up for breakfast. It's our Friday and Monday ritual, and it's one of the highlights of my day. I get to stay horizontal, under a nice warm duvet, and can usually get away with "Yes", "No" and "Really?" in various inflections to participate in whatever LittleBear wants to play.

Today's game was a convoluted one, in which his sharks had a birthday, so my bunny and his dinosaurs and penguins had to provide (imaginary) birthday presents. This is a game we've played on many occasions, and they usually act as an excellent weather-vane for what LittleBear would really like as a present for LittleBear. And the final present is always "Arctic Zero", a fictitious lego set, based upon the other Arctic Explorer lego sets he already owns. So the denouement of the game is to assemble the imaginary lego set.

Building imaginary lego

Bunny was instructed to build the tail and wings of the "flying machine", while the penguins assembled the cockpit, propellers and rotor. But then, disaster struck! Bunny had missed a page in the instruction book! So, I solemnly helped Bunny to turn back in the, completely-invented-and-not-actually-there-at-all-book to find the right page. Apparently I still got the page wrong. At which point, LittleBear began to get genuinely upset that we would never be able to finish the lego machine if we couldn't find the right page.

That's right, my son almost brought himself to the point of tears over the fact that we couldn't find a non-existent page in an imaginary book to provide fictional instructions for building a make-believe model of a fantastical flying machine.

Do you think he gets it from me?

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