For his fourth birthday last year, Owen received a big tub of Army stuff with about a hundred of those little green plastic soldiers. Then he also got a giant bag of about a hundred little red plastic fire fighters. He mixes all those heroes together when he plays his favorite thing to play, which is going around and setting up what he calls "forts" in various locations in our playroom and den.
Last Christmas he got one of those Wild West "toobs," which is a plastic cylinder full of miniature figures from the Wild West like cowboys, Indians, some tee pees, covered wagons and various livestock. Owen happily assimilated these into the "forts," along with some Playmobil knights in armor. So now our Thomas the Tank Engine train table looks like some surrealistic tableau in which a modern fire brigade and some Star Wars Happy Meal toys are defending the Ardennes woods from marauding cowboys and knights with donkeys and Lego airplanes.
Yes, it's a very macho scene at our house of three boys, but I had no idea how male oriented we really were until last night. I sat watching my favorite new guilty-pleasure TV show, "Million Dollar Listing," when I felt like I was being watched. On the end table next to me stood the pioneer mom, complete with apron and swaddled infant, and an American Indian squaw (can you say that word anymore?) kneeling as if before a fire.
Out of all those thousands of tiny plastic figures, Owen had managed to cull the only two females from the group and isolated them from the action on a dusty end table in the den.
So good luck, Sarah Palin. Let me know what it's like if you actually get to play with the big boys.
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