Let’s Pretend We’re All Grown-Up

Kai and Amélie play make believe a lot less than I remember doing as a kid. Then again, there was a lot of imagination involved in making our toys seems half as interesting as most of theirs, and we could only dream about a computer or a game system.

In one make believe game that they do play sometimes, Kai plays the father to Baby Amélie. The game seems to consist of Kai providing for his daughter, Amélie, who is quite needy. She speaks a broken baby talk and demands things like food, a baby bed and entertainment in the form of toys, all of which Kai lovingly provides.

Invariably, though, Kai gets fed up with Amélie’s constant demands. It must become tiring for him, because the game always ends the same way.

“Amélie, let’s pretend I gave you some magic candy and it made you a grown-up.”

Amélie protests in her Baby Amélie speak, and Kai pushes harder. “No, really, Amélie, can’t you just be a grown-up now?”

“No want grow up, Daddy,” she manages to say with her thumb in her mouth.

After a few minutes of back-and-forth, Kai insisting that Amélie become more mature and Amélie stubbornly resisting abandoning her babyhood, and then the game fizzles out, with Kai turning to his Matchbox cars, which are more obliging than his little sister, and Amélie taps out a song she’s written on the piano with one finger.