"A. Peevie," I said to my son the other day, "Turn off the Gameboy and do something creative for awhile."Being the angelic and cooperative boy that he is, he immediately shut down the Pokemon Silver and started dreaming up activities to stimulate his kinetic imagination.
An hour later I walked into the dining room, and found an entire aquatic zoo taking over the dining room table. Tubs of 
water housed tiny plastic sea creatures: a shark, an octopus, and an eel, complete with a rocky undersea cave.
water housed tiny plastic sea creatures: a shark, an octopus, and an eel, complete with a rocky undersea cave.There was even a fresh-water exhibit, with frogs and lizards lounging on rocky shoals, and, inexplicably, an Outback exhibit, with tiny koala bears hanging from twigs stuck in dirt.
(You can see in the photos that M. Peevie was graciously given permission to watch--but hands off!--as the final touches were made to the aquatic exhibition.)
Everyone that walked through the dining room for the next week stopped to visit the zoo. The kids especially admired it, reaching out to touch the rock formations, and asking questions:
"Wow! Who made this?" asked the appreciatives ones.
"What is it?" asked the less intuitive ones.
"Why did he make it?" more than one kid asked, not understanding why a child of the 21st century would spend so much time playing at something with absolutely no electronic features. "Did he do it for an assignment?"
"How did the water get blue?" (That was my brilliant contribution: one drop of blue food coloring in each habitat to give it that authentic ocean hue. But A. Peevie said Octopus needed to have his water darker blue, because he lives at the bottom of the ocean where there is no light. We added an extra teeny drip, giving the octopus' garden a deep sea dimness.)
I've mentioned A. Peevie's inimitable and sometimes peculiar take on the world in this blog before. This is one more example of his unparalleled combination of intelligence, personality, imagination, and interests leading to a unique experience of creative play.
I love that boy.
And now he needs to get his crap off my dining room table.
2 comments:
Only you can make me howl with belly-deep laughter during my late-night blog surfing sessions!
"And now he needs to get his crap off my dining room table."
Bucky
Two thoughts: 1) You need to read some better blogs, because there are a lot of funny ones out there; and 2) thank you. There is nothing better to E. Peevie the writer than having her own words quoted back to her.
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