As a kid, my sister, cousins, and I grew up in rural northwest Missouri. We were surrounded by fields of clover and cows and cow patties, ponds with muddy banks and croaking frogs, barns to play in and (at my cousins' house) on the roof of. We had plenty of tom-boy adventures, priding ourselves on being able to walk barefoot
everywhere - on the gravel driveway, through the yard and the fields. At least once a summer I ended up with a wasp sting (more often than not on the foot). Bugs and snakes and spiders and frogs - all were (and still are!) interesting and normal parts of life, things to be watched and respected and appreciated but not feared. Don't get me wrong, I spent plenty of time playing with dolls and animals and dress-up and other traditionally-girl things, and many days running screaming away from horse flies, because they really hurt when they bite you on the top of your head for no reason other than to be mean. My point is, I consider myself to have a well-rounded upbringing, neither limited to just girl or boy toys and activities. And I work hard to share that appreciation and sense of wonder about the world with Calvin.
So when Calvin suggested the other day that we play "transformers" I stood a little stunned, suddenly completely at a loss at how you play transformers. Granted it is way harder to play pretend as an adult, but I hold my own pretty well pretending to be superheros. But transformers? I don't remember ever playing transformers. Just what does a transformer do other than transform from robot to vehicle? I'm good, but not that good.
Calvin looked at me standing there and said "What's wrong, mommy?"
Hmm... "I don't think I know how to play transformers, kiddo."
"Oh, its easy. Just bend over like this and go..." and off he went. "You be the firetruck transformer, mommy, and I'll be the helicopter." And off we went.
All I needed to do was ask - he was happy to demonstrate. Turns out it wasn't really any different from superheros, which really isn't much different from pretending to be birds or dinosaurs or snakes, just all at different speeds and with a different dialog.
Which brings me to last night's dinner. It was left-over night and what Calvin settled on was spaghetti pasta with pesto sauce - pesto pasta, one of his favorites. He was clearly not very hungry as his meal was lingering past ours, eating one noodle at a time. Somehow his constant dialog drifted off to snakes, and then to what if there was a snake in his pasta, and then he was eating snakes and saying "yum, yum, yum". Then we talked about what animals eat snakes (raccoons?), and what foods snakes eat (birds but not plants, for example). Suddenly, Calvin made a big chomp, paused, and looked around with wide eyes. "A snake just ate me!" he said. "I'm inside a snake. He ate you too, we're all inside the snake." Looking all around, he said "its different in here, its squishy", and then he was up at the wall, pretending to squish it with his hands. Back at the table we all started to sway back and forth as the snake started to wiggle along, and then, in true boy fashion, he said "Oh no, mommy, something is eating the snake. He's going to eat us too. Oh no, your face is cut in two!" Umm... weird.
Lately I've been thinking to myself that boys, and especially raising a boy, is waaaay different than being a girl. I'm pretty sure that these scenarios didn't come up for me as a kid.
