Boys and Toys
I haven’t posted much here about my kids, mostly for reasons
of their privacy and a sense that it’s their story to tell, but sometimes I can’t
resist sharing snippets of our family life together. My sons, like many children,
play with action figures. For years they’ve played back and forth with one son’s
battle stories existing intertwined with the other son’s stories of love and
fashion. Sample dialogue overheard: “And then battle ship came out of nowhere
and sent a huge missile into the ship, kapo! says Son 1. Son 2 takes the story
in a different direction, “The princess says to the prince, ‘This isn’t a very
romantic cruise.” The rest of the story alternated between dresses being ruined
and battles being fought. For very different children, they get along
remarkably well, giving equal place to the different kinds of stories they
favor. Tales of kings and queens work well because you can both battles with
dragons and fashionable balls. I didn’t
realize how differently they played with their toys though until recently when
a friend’s child visited and had to have the rules and the script regarding the
action figures explained to him. They have together created an All Girl Army.
Otherwise, as they explained, all the girl figures which come in the packages
would be wasted. So they were stripped of their girly accessories and outfitted
with the spare shields, swords etc. that we’ve accumulated over the years. The
All Girl Army is led by this tall blonde warrior woman they’ve named The Lemon
Girl. The Lemon Girl has special powers, mostly lemon shaped bombs attached to
her dress that she lobs into battle when needed. I’ve known about Lemon Girl
for awhile and about her warrior sisters. I have one son who directs the All
Girl Army and the other who leads the Men’s Army. But what comes next was news
to me. A torture scene led t the discovery that with their latest favorite kind
of action figure you can separate the heads from the torsos and the torsos from
the legs and trunk. This led to new possibilities. They have an army they call
the She-He’s. There are She-He-She’s and She-He-He’s (it depends on which head
you get which category you fall into). Visiting child insisted you either had
to be a she or a he, and I was charmed to hear my kids defending the idea that
life wasn’t that simple. It’s not simple at all but much more interesting this
way. Later we had a fun chat about how many variations on the gender theme there
might be. They said they’d think about that and I am sure they will.
