Last week my 4-year-old son was sick, and in our house, sick time is also movie time. Unfortunately, it was also his birthday, so to ease the disappointment we bought a new movie: Toy Story. I’m sure many of you have seen it, but I had not. My baby was napping, and it had been years since I had watched a movie while relaxing on the couch (not lying), so I ignored all the undone chores and indulged in show time.
Toy Story was Disney/Pixar’s first movie, and it was the first animated film using computer-generated imagery. With a first rate cast, including Tom Hanks, it has to be one of the most delightful movies I have ever seen. Now, of course, there are two sequels, and Toy Story 3 was just released this summer. All of them have received critical acclaim.
The movie reminded me of my own childhood fantasies. I had a bed full of stuffed animals, and I had named them all. Once a friend of mine and I conducted a wedding and married two of my stuffed dogs. Yes, I was a true girl. My 4-year-old son isn’t as interested in stuffed animals as I was, and I don’t foresee him ever conducting a wedding.
I do hear my son in his imaginative play, however. I catch snatches of his inner world as I pass by, but usually I don’t understand his jibber jabber. Sometimes he’ll tell me that we’re in the ocean, and we’ll talk about what we see in our underwater living room. Most of the time I’m caught up in the daily grind of my adult world, and I feel sad that I cannot become fully engaged in his imaginative world.
I remember once when I was a little girl – somewhere between 5 and 7 – there was a tornado warning where we lived on AltusAir Force Base in Oklahoma. My father was not home at the time, and it must have been a serious threat because my mother showed me a place to sit in our hall closet and told me to stay there. But while she and my brother listened to the radio in the other room, I found great joy in making this small closet my new “home.”
I spread my blanket across some boxes and put my pillow against the wall. Then I took several trips back and forth from my room to the hall closet so that I could fill my new space with my stuffed animals. I created quite a cozy place for myself, and then I searched the house for our cat, Blackie. He didn’t like the idea of sharing that space with me and my fake animals, so I had to scoot in there quickly and close the closet door before he got out.
I didn’t have much time to enjoy my closet home before my mother opened the door. The tornado threat had passed, and she was not thrilled with my handy work. She ordered me to take everything back into my room, and I was extremely disappointed.
I love that children get to live in their worlds of imagination and play, though sometimes it might be frustrating for us as parents. I haven’t had to fear that my son is too wrapped up in a fictional world, however. He seems to be clear about what is real and what isn’t. Once he told me he wanted a bat, and when I told him that we could not have a bat for a pet, he sighed and said, “Not a real bat. A toy bat.” That’s not the only time he has informed me about what is real and what isn’t.
When he first started watching Toy Story, he was perplexed. When the toys came alive, he said, “But they’re not moving toys!” I had to explain that in the movie, they do move. Later, after the movie was over, he looked around at his toys and explained that when he isn’t around, his toys move too.
Shelli Bond Pabis is a Winder resident and columnist for the Barrow Journal. You can reach her at shelli@mamaofletters.com.
Of course at dinner, we had to set two plates, and we had to buy an extra car seat. His "brother" may have been pretend but the car seat "had" to be "real".
I suppose we could have just plopped our son in front of a TV and put in a Video Tape (no dvd or tivo back then) but instead, we encouraged his imagination.
We let him imagine, dream, create, and learn through play. You imagine it, you dream it, you create it, you build it.
Last week, our son called from college. He's finishing up his masters in the spring. He wanted to give me a heads up that he intended to continue his education.
Of course he hasn't decided if he wants to get a second masters in international finance or go for a PHD. He has this dream..... He imagines that one day .....