Pretending

I find one of hardest things about being a parent is playing pretend. It might be because I am an engineer or because it's been a really long time since I pretended I was a anything but me. Yes, yes I read comic books and science fiction novels and fantasy novels and those magazines with color glossy photos for the articles but even with all that, but I'm just not good at pretending. Unfortunately as a parent, that's not acceptable.

I think the kids have a sixth sense about these type of things too because they never ask Mom to play pretend games. They only ask me. For example, the weather this past weekend was beautiful so we went outside to play. The Boy decides that we need to play dinosaurs. The Girl decides that dinosaur tends to get rough so she will referee. At this point, I am sure you are wondering why the game Dinosaur needs a referee! Well that's because one person is a plant eater and one person is a predator. Wanna take a guess as to who is who????

ANYWAY, once again I get stuck playing "plant eater" and I get to be an anklyosaurus. Not something cool like a triceratops or even a stegasourus. Oh no, I have to be a ankylosaurus. The boy decides the he is an allosaurus. How anyone but he thinks this is a good idea is beyond me.

So, of course, the predator is hungry. And this means that I as the plant eater must avoid being eaten. And thus begins the chase part of the game. The Boy gets to make cool RROOAAARRRR noises and I get to make squeals that sound like cats drowning. I tried to make my own roar noises but I was informed that plant eaters didn't make such noises. After five minutes of me making various noises such as car explosions, machine guns, lions, tigers, you name it..., it was determined the only noise that I made that was acceptable as a whiney cat noise.

AND, just to make sure whatever traces of manhood I had were completely shredded we played in the front yard while my manly-man neighbor mowed his yard. So, there I was running around the front yard squealing away while a small boy chased me making roaring noises. I finally decided that I had enough and the "plant eater" turned on the dangerous predator and tackled him. Somehow most of Daddy's games end in tackling which is why the Girl referees.

So, the helpless plant eater was sitting on the ferocious predator and I informed him "The plant eaters have had enough! The plant eater is going to sit on you!"

The response... "You can't sit on me! I bit you first"... And suddenly things went downhill

"You can't bite me. I'm sitting on you. Plant eaters weigh so much you can't move"
"Can too. I bit you before you sat on me! Predators are faster than plant eaters"
"Did not bite me! I'm sitting on you"
"You're wounded because I bit you"

"AM NOT"
"ARE TOO"
"AM NOT AM NOT"

At which point, the predator issued a terrible roar.... and bit me. For real.

Yet another game of dinosaur that I lost.