One of the best things about living in a house full of nerds is
continuing to be surprised by the ways my kids keep themselves amused.
When they were younger, characters or themes from favorite books would
seep into their play, with Harry Potter being a perpetual favorite. It's
cool when this still happens - any parent who has hoped to stave off
the effects of media and middle school in the lives of their
children would rejoice to hear their 14-year-old daughter willingly
playing the part of Hermione with her 11-year-old sister (Ron) and
sister's 10-year-old friend (Harry). However, my favorite characters my
children assume are ones they've invented.
There's the
Ancient Math Teacher, aka Mr. Minus, and his two students, Bad Boy, who
is not so much bad as stupid, and Good Girl, so genuinely pleasant and
concerned when she reminds Mr. Minus to take his Gingko biloba that it's
impossible to dismiss her as a suck-up. Good Girl arrives at her
tutoring sessions with a huge stack of books, gets all the problems
right, and is rewarded with candy; when Bad Boy misses questions he
grabs at the candy anyway, causing Mr. Minus to wrap his shaky, elderly arms around the candy dish and pull it away, feebly crying, "No!...No!...No!"
Mr. Minus is such a beloved character in our house that my
eleven-year-old tried to dress like him for Halloween a couple of years
ago. It might have worked better if I'd let her go to school with gray
hair. As it was, most of her friends thought, with her corduroys, vest, and boys' dress shirt decorated with equations and math symbols, she was going as "a geek." I suppose they were technically correct, but still.
I
was honored a few years ago when the girls began inventing roles for
me, the least demanding being The Distracted Mother, which only requires
me to keep doing what I'm already doing and murmur, "Mm-hmm," and
"That's nice, dear" in response to Little Timmy's increasingly ludicrous
(and dangerous) requests. This usually ends with the arrival of the
Teenaged Daughter, who jolts me back into the present: "Moth-errr! You
just let the Little Brat drive the ca-ar!" I have to admit to
occasionally being uncomfortable with how easy it is to play this role.
More challenging is the role of Little Sweetheart's mother, since
Little Sweetheart is one of the most thoroughly obnoxious
children in existence. Unfortunately, it's impossible to duplicate her
way of talking ("Don't mwock my aaccent, Mwommy!") but we have fun
trying.
I can't pinpoint when I started seeing less of Mr. Minus and Little Sweetheart. Possibly it had something to do with my older daughter's entering middle school, or maybe I can blame it on the Wii that arrived two Christmases ago. It's probably more realistic to just chalk it up to normal adolescent development.
The girls' characters will still occasionally oblige me with a command
performance, but I try not to ask too often and am just grateful that they enjoy being a team of two. Recently they spent an
extended weekend with my parents in Arizona and when they returned, they
were addressing each other as "Darling Sister." Not as exciting as Little Timmy playing with fire, but it's enough.
