The Loveys

[dr_pretentious]

Gareth's new security object is a knife.

It's a brightly colored plastic knife with a cyclopean smiley face in the handle, which occasionally he pretends to feed morsels from his plate. It's from the Ikea children's department, of course. Where else could you find a child-safe knife with an one-eyed alien smiley face?

I wondered, at first, how he came to fall in love with the knife. He already had a lovey for naps and bedtime, a very charming plush puppy. What did the knife have that Doggie didn't?

Doggie wasn't allowed to run in the sprinkler, stomp in mud puddles, sit on Gareth's high chair tray at meals, or splash in the bath. The knife was allowed to do all those things, was a lot smaller and lighter to carry around, and was handy for flinging soil out of the tomato pots on the back patio.

Gareth has made a perfectly rational decision about one of the deepest, least rational bonds of his young life. The knife is an excellent companion on adventures, even if the child care people at the gym (also perfectly rationally) won't let him bring it into their play area.

I suppose it'll be good preparation if he decides he wants to be an astronaut xenolinguist or a barbarian warrior when he grows up.

Meanwhile, I find a mighty inner struggle is necessary to resist naming the knife Mack.

Comments

[ingridsummers.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I really think the knife's name should be Mack. Love your stories.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

It would be a fine name, but I've learned not to name Gareth's loveys for him. The ones I've succeeded at sticking names to, he's soon gone off, as if my naming them broke the magick. He insisted that Doggie would be Doggie-Dog, sometimes Doggie for short, despite my misgivings about the objectionable hip-hop star of the same name, and Doggie-Dog continues to give him comfort. So, not Mack, at least not for now.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

Why resist? Every magic sword needs a name, after all. :-)

But is it me, or is that description of the knife disturbingly similar to this?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I can totally imagine Gareth feeding that knife morsels of tomato.

What you can't see in this catalog photo (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30096906) is that the knives have cyclopean smileys, the forks have cylon-like robot faces, and the spoons have bulbous eyestalks. Gareth has shown us that all the utensils are friends, and sometimes during meals they like to give each other casual kisses on the cheek.

[monotreme.livejournal.com]

Hey, I started that - he just keeps doing it!

[tselmende.livejournal.com]

*grins* You know, when he turns 12, the SCA would be happy to teach him how to use knives properly...

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

If he's down with that, I'm all in favor.

I've enjoyed your fencing stories. Back in the day, I was the worst varsity fencer at Vassar. I was slow on my feet and slow with the blade, but quick with my eyes, so when I was the first person on the strip against the Inscrutable Opponent on some other team, I could usually stagger back with observations that my faster teammates could use. It was sort of like being the penguin who gets shoved off the ice floe to see if there are any orcas in the water. Sounds bad, but I loved it.

I have long said that any child of mine will be introduced to at least one martial art as early as the nearest good-with-kids martial arts master will teach him. I think my school experiences would have gone far better if I'd entered kindergarten with a black belt. As a boy who is very small for his age and already geeky and bookish, Gareth's going to need some rough-and-tumble skills, even if we homeschool him.

I put the small pacifist vegetarian child

[amushink.livejournal.com]

in Aikido for much the same reason. Aikido has been the most gentle and zen-like of the martial arts for her, but she has advanced steadily and is now on the verge of starting weapons form. It has been a good thing, I think, and given her good physical confidence. I think the best kind of bleeding heart liberal hippy pacifist is the kind who could kick your ass if she wanted to.

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

As for rough and tumble skills....frequent play dates with my kid may help since he is twice Gareth's size and clearly not a pacifist.

[monotreme.livejournal.com]

rattan anyway. I have wondered whether having wiccan parents leads a kid to have a plastic Athame at the age of 2. We are traditionalists, so he may have a hankering for knives.