Bad Guys Everywhere

I stare at my son’s beseeching eyes and my daughter’s eager face. They want me to play their game so much. They want me to get up, put on my costume, hold aloft my sword and fight. But me, I want to sit, read a good book, maybe listen to some music while I watch them run around. Also, I have no imagination for such games.

Finally, I agree. I tell them I will be fire. They smile and start spinning, screaming war cries into the air. These unintelligible fragments hit me from either side. I am lost already and, according to them, the game has not begun. They are adamant about this. I sigh inwardly. I ask again what it is I’m supposed to be doing. They both do the child equivalent of eye rolling and almost simultaneously say, “mom, fight the bad guys.”

Eventually, both of them get tired of my failure and utter lack of skill in this game. They just start battling on their own, showing me their impressive arm chops and leg kicks. I smile at them and look a little beyond them to the bad guys, those imaginary villains that manifest only in a child’s mind. And then I hear my son say, “we won the battle.” I’m just glad they can be defeated so quickly and are nowhere near as beastly as the real thing.