Not every game is fun
Playtime has to end sometime, and I hate that just as much as anyone.
The boy and I have started playing a new game recently. It’s called “Can I clean up his entire train set before he catches me and insists on keeping it out.”
I never win.
Really, it’s a three player game where the better half and I divide his room at the end of the day and he bounces back and forth between us while we use one another as distractions—each of us getting a portion of our job done while he stalls the other, only for him to glimpse a beloved toy going into a box and then ricocheting back to prevent this crime of cleanliness.
To his credit, he loves singing the clean up song. The idea of doing what the song suggests has simply never crossed his mind.
In fact, the process of cleaning up usually reminds him of toys he enjoyed earlier and would now like to enjoy again. Picture the most nostalgic person you know who was also the prom king or queen flipping through their high school yearbook.
“Wow, I almost forgot I had a plastic hammer. The things I used to build…”
“Buzz Lightyear. Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”
“This green monster truck was a real head turner in the school parking lot.”
Each toy we scoop from the floor creates a chance for him to travel back in time to a worry-free afternoon where all we did was play while cleaning up remained a problem for our future selves.
It goes on like this until his arms are full of once discarded toys he can’t quite figure out how to now play with at once. Then, the train set.
I blame the noise. The collision of wood collapsing into a box sounds particularly destructive. And the boy responds with the exact same panic I’d expected from an environmentalist witnessing deforestation in their own backyard.
The toys he has gathered are tossed in the air as he drops to his knees and begs for the life of his conductor. I respond with the same amount of mercy as Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator
He snatches at trains with every intention of putting them back on whatever pieces of track remain. The perfect loop is gone, but the station, the post office, the green tree (ironically, the only piece of foliage we haven’t lost), all remind him of the promised land we once built.
He is Jeremiah and I am the armies of Babylon.
Together, we experience every stage of grief in under a minute, always in a different order. And it’s not always clear who is feeling which emotion.
Sometimes, he starts with shock and I end with anger. Other times, we bargain and then both leave depressed. Once, he started in denial and stayed there, eventually climbing into the box with the train set.
Now matter how the grieving process goes, we leave the room the same way every time.
He exits with his head down—a train in one hand and a single piece of track in the other. I go straight to the freezer.
And we meet on the couch.
Tragedy behind us and ice cream between us.
Sometimes, the remaining piece of train and track get left on the couch for me to pick up later. Other times, he drops them in the box by his own free will before picking out his bedtime book.
That’s when I remember that the mess and the clean-up and the arguing and the attempts to teach him a lesson don’t matter.
What matters is that we played.
Thanks for reading this far.
- jd
And also…
We own a tv. Thanks to all who helped. We nailed it.
I actually love building IKEA furniture. Specifically, because of the wooden pegs that holds the pieces together. I love those things.
The founder of Rolex came up with the company’s name when a genie whispered it into his hear. His words. And how I will now explain any idea I have.
Queso is overrated and hummus is underrated. There, I said it.
