Kiddo#3 went to summer camp this week for the first time, and he brought home (for me) a new understanding of how boys his age think.
“Fritz has a magic wand,” he told me.
Fritz has a different name, too, by the way, but I’m changing it for this blog so you guys don’t all travel to TenMilesAway Summer Day Camp in order to get your magic fixes. Although I shouldn’t bother, since anyone with a magic wand probably knows how to defend himself.
Kiddo#3 told me that Fritz had dared him: if he was able to whack Fritz ten times during PoisonBall, Fritz would use his magic wand to zap him a stuffed pig from Angry Birds. And not just any pig. “A mustache pig.”
PoisonBall?
“It’s a game we play at the camp.”
And he wants you to hit him ten times?
“Actually he said fifty, but I said That’s impossible! so he made it ten.”
I said, “Tell Fritz that instead of conjuring your a mustache pig, you want him to conjure you a magic wand of your own so you can conjure Angry Birds pigs for yourself.”
Kiddo#3 loves this idea and has spent the past 48 hours telling me all the things he will do with his magic wand. It runs the gamut from turning himself into an Angry Bird so he can launch himself with a slingshot to making his stuffed animals real (they’re already real: I have to move armloads of them whenever I clean his room) to turning his sister into a mushroom and stomping on her.
Kiddo#3 is a great study in the seven-year-old mind. A little later, he told me in an awed voice, “And Fritz has his own bodyguard!”
Now that he’s said that, can’t you see how cool that would be for a boy? A bodyguard. Someone to beat up people on your behalf, walking around behind you, scanning the people at the supermarket to make sure none of them pushes their cart too near — total awesomeness.
Note to any of my readers who write MG fiction: a magic boy with a bodyguard. It will sell a million copies.
I said to Kiddo#3, “I want you to think about something. A boy with a magic wand could go anywhere. He could do anything he wanted. And yet, he’s spending this week at day camp in TenMilesAway.”
Kiddo#3 said, “So?”
I said, “So that’s the best possible place he could think of. He could be vacationing on Venus, but instead he’s playing PoisonBall and sitting at your table for snack.”
I guess I picked a terrific day camp, and I didn’t even know it. And I’m mildly concerned about what happens today when Kiddo#3 comes home. Concerned what happens if he comes home with a magic wand. But more concerned what happens when he doesn’t.
