Wednesday, December 23, 2015

... ride, 'Arry, ride...

... upon your Nimbus stick... or, "Mount up, Harry Trotter!"

The current obsession in our household is with Harry Potter. Or 'Arry Pot'r, as we attempt to say. Combine this with an on-going fascination with all things horse-related, and we end up with some unique creative play. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

K is a reader. I am too. We all are. K is also very sensitive to violence or any suggestion of violence. And I am too. So I get this, I'm sympathetic. She's also disinclined to stretch herself much. She doesn't embrace new experiences. If she had her way, we would never repaint, never move furniture, never change a thing. Except maybe to get some horses to put in the back yard.

She will read just about anything having to do with horses. Or anything that she's already familiar with. She is not especially adventurous, in other words. So she'd rather reread Thoroughbred #22 a fifteenth time than branch out to something I'm recommending but which she's unsure of (example: The Good Master).

She has "known" for years that 1) she did not want to read Harry Potter, 2) it was too scary, 3) it was (probably) a "boy book", 4) (a bunch of other reasons I can't recall at the moment. But at some point L decided she wanted to hear the first Harry Potter book, so M started reading it to her at bedtime. They were nearly through with it when K got sucked in too, and once they were done, L & M watched the first movie while K insisted it would be too scary and so she and I watched "Mr. Dobbs Takes a Vacation" which is an odd Jimmy Stewart movie full of early 1960s "humor" that K seems to love. I think this was the fifth or sixth time we've watched it. L & M moved on to the second book, and this time K was listening from the start and liked what she was hearing. When they finished that book, they all (we all) watched the second movie, K with some trepidation but knowing the story, willing to give it a try. She loved it (just as she'd loved the book), and immediately wanted to watch the first movie, so she, L and I did. Then K went and read the first book. And then second book. And the first book again. And all the while, she, L & M were working through the third book.

"just 10 more minutes!"


Now all K wants to do is watch Harry Potter movies (the first two especially - the third one didn't really grab her fancy). And play horses.

Which leads to something I like to call "Harry Trotter."

As near as I can tell, listening in from the kitchen while the girls play in the living room, is that they are in a stable, and the horses have names like Dumbledore and Nimbus 2000 and Fireball and Snape. They wear robes and discuss other students and classes like Dark Arts and play quidditch disparage muggles and ride horses and brooms and have created an imaginary world that combines the two seemingly disparate worlds in a way that I love. And don't quite "get."

But that's ok too, because I'm a parent and they are playing and being creative and damn, I love that.