When I take Katherine to swim class (as I did this past Saturday, even though it was Officially Margie’s turn to do it — given that she’s going to have all the child care responsibilities this week), I usually bring my trunks and we swim afterwards. They have a great recreational swimming pool at Lone Tree, with lots of shallow areas, water spouting pipes, and keen things like that.
So Katherine and I will splash around a while, which usually turns into a big game of some sort. This past Saturday was an elaborate play, with both Katherine and myself contributing details as we went played it over, and over, and over again.
The basic story (Katherine’s contributions in italics):
Sleeping Beauty is sleeping, and is captured by a bad guy, Doctor Zin, who takes her back to his castle and ties her up.
[There is a large, 8-foot-tall pipe that goes straight up out of the pool in a shallow area, and water umbrellas out from this most entertainingly. Katherine decided that Sleeping Beauty was tied to this post, and backed herself up to it, putting her wrists behind this. She has a great future as a dramatist or as someone into bondage games, I’m not sure which.]
Dr. Zin leaves for a while after interrogating what she knows about his fiendish plans with no success. Then a hero [played by the same person who played the bad guy] finds her and rescues her. It’s Dash, from the Incredibles. [It was originally a Daddy Monster, but she decided it was better as Dash.] He breaks her bonds and escapes with her. But the cascading water is really a force field, and blocks Dash’s escape. But she can go through the force field, and she helps him out. They flee, get separated, and she falls asleep.
Repeat many, many, many times, trading off roles as desired. Perhaps she’ll be a marriage therapist instead.
The amusing denouement is when Daddy decreed “This is the last time, then we have to go.” Intriguingly enough, the story changed at that point, as Kitten (playing Dr. Zin) explicitly tied lots of knots when binding up Sleeping Beauty. Then, as Dash, couldn’t get the knots undone, and had to go get his daddy. Mr. Incredible then came back, but he couldn’t undo the knots either, so he had to go off and get Dash’s mommy. She couldn’t —
Daddy decided that this new, expanded version of the story was running a bit long and decided to cut it off. The bastard.
And if you review the story, you’ll see that besides a couple of small story elements, it was pretty much Katherine’s plot the whole way. Yes, this is the sort of amazing imagination that we have to live with. And we’re pretty damned lucky.
(Posted by CronDave)