Happy things, part the first

[radegund]

mollydot tagged me to post every day for 6 days about something that made me happy that day.

Unny spent today on the sofa with a temperature and a series of horrendous, stringy sneezes. This didn't make me happy, but a story/game we told/played in the afternoon did. It involved a monster who lived in a castle, to start with, and a boy called Oisín who turned up in the castle courtyard by magic. There was some free discussion and portcullis action, and then a fight with a dragon (who had a magic secret pocket containing bandages, which it could put over any wound they inflicted), and then they decided to go adventuring together. They went to a nearby mountain range where they discovered a way to get to a "hole world" - get this: a world full of holes that lead to other worlds. (Eat your heart out, C.S. Lewis, Diana Wynne Jones, et al.) Then Oisín faded from the story (bringing him in had been my idea, as it happens), and I was cast as the monster wanting to go to a world of food, but there was a dragon (O) guarding the hole on behalf of a mean monster. The dragon agreed to let me by, but first I had to say a spell to enable him to step aside. He gave me directions to a witch's cave, where I went. The witch (O) agreed to give me the spell in return for a box of strawberries and sweets from the world of food. She wrote the spell down because it was complicated, and I brought it back and said it to the dragon, who let me down the hole. When I got to the food world, I first went to the strawberry stall, and then got directions to the sweet shop, which also sold bread, fish, and brie. And peas. So I filled two suitcases full of various foods, which I then had to lug up the ladder in the wall of the shaft leading back up to the hole world. I caught a glimpse of the mean monster, but I don't think he saw me.

Reading over that, the only bits I'm responsible for are Oisín arriving the castle courtyard and the writing down of the complicated spell. It's the detail I love. And the plotting. Oh, OK, all of it. Gamers please note: he was, to all intents and purposes, GMing me. He is FOUR. I am alarmed (but in that burstingly proud way that probably makes a lot of people want to thump me).

Who'm I tagging? YOU. I'm tagging you.

Comments

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

*impressed*

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Hunh. I would have thought all kids did that; certainly I and both my brothers did from an early age, and had major fights over who was going to direct the stories. Is it unusual?

(Another instance of "Drew assumes his experiences are universal; discovers they're not." Film at 11!)

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know. It's clearly not unusual for children to play elaborate collaborative story games. In fact, I'd bet it's almost universal.

I don't remember what my stories were like at four. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be as struck by this if O were five. What I love about it is the sophistication - the evidence of a kind of ... plotting instinct, perhaps. The wood-between-the-worlds trope has so much narrative potential. And I love being GMed by my small son. He frequently conducts me while I sing, too :-)