Gamer Girl (or "For Love of Dragons")

Some of you may know that I have, over the years, played a pen-and-paper roleplaying game called Dungeons & Dragons. Mostly, this game takes place in the imagination of the players, but sometimes you use miniatures to keep track of which character is where, relative to monsters...like dragons, for instance.

I have a dragon miniature for just such a situation, and Elaina has discovered it. She's fascinated with it. She always asks to see it (um...demands, really, but in the interest of preserving her image as a sweet little girl, I'm going to say "asks").

Far be it from me to discourage her interest in fantasy roleplaying games—especially since the object of her interest isn't some frilly, glitter-horned unicorn, but a dragon. Not a cutesy, pot-bellied, "Hello Kids!" kind of dragon either, but a dragon that's every bit as nasty-looking as its eight inch height allows.

As you can see, she enjoys him quite a bit. What's interesting is the ritual that's evolved surrounding this Visit to the Dragon.

The Scene

It so happens that the dragon is on top of a bookshelf, one shelf of which holds a picture of Heidi in her early 20s. There's also a basket nearby where one of the cats often sleeps.

John and Elaina:

Reach for the dragon, grunting with the strain (this is a topic for another post).

Elaina:

Touch the dragon's head and wings and smile, babble a little.

John:

Yes, that's the dragon.

Elaina:

Turn and point at the cat's basket/bed and grunt

John:

Yep, kitty sleeps there sometimes.

Elaina:

Turn and point to Heidi's picture on the bookshelf and babble some more

John:

And that's Mommy.

It's the same routine, every time, and that in itself is interesting. The fact that the cat has only been there once during this routine doesn't prevent Elaina from pointing out the fact that a kitty does, indeed, sometimes sleep there. And she always finds it worth mentioning that Mommy's picture is there on the bookshelf, as if I might have been unaware of that. There's almost no loss of enthusiasm, despite the fact that she does this pretty much every day. She has an interesting little mind....