My two-(nearly three)-year-old son, Justin, has a penchant for creating fiction. I'm actually quite proud of him. He'll declare all sorts of amazing and impossible happenings, and of course, my wife and I play along.
His latest fetish has been dragons. He'll come running into the room, an expression of alarm on his face. "A dragon's coming! A dragon's coming!"
We then all cover our eyes, because, as Daddy taught him, the best way to hide is to cover your own eyes -- if you can't see them, they can't see you. (For some reason it works only with dragons. Mama and Daddy can find him right away. It's a parental superpower.) After a while, he'll inform us that the dragons are gone. We uncover our eyes and life returns to normal until the next dragon attack.
I've learned a lot about dragons in the past weeks. Dragons subsist exclusively on fish and pizza. They don't like hot dogs. They come through holes in the wall. They live in the water.
I encourage this safari of the imagination. When his TV consumption is limited to about 30 minutes or so a day, it blossoms. He's learning his letters and their sounds very well, and his vocabulary expands daily. All these factors could culminate in the creation of a great storyteller. Daddy would be proud.
Of course, that's all assuming he restricts his storytelling abilities to telling admitted pieces of fiction. Lately he's discovered another use for his newfound ability.
"Justin . . . do you need to go potty?"
"No."
Thy smell betrays thee, kiddo.
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