So, I was recently reading this very excellent post/lecture/essay by Brandon Sanderson about the innovations Tolkien made creating the genre of High Fantasy, when, near the end, he mentions an interaction he had once with the mother of one of his fans. Just after he had signed the daughter’s book, the mother stopped and asked him something like, ‘Not to be rude, but how do I get her to stop reading all of this fantasy drivel?’. Sanderson then goes on…
Sometimes my daughters get very exasperated when I forget something they’ve told me, like whether they talked to their teacher about turning that homework assignment in late, or that they have a planned social engagement this week, or that they already took the test on The Great Gatsby and don’t need to think about it anymore. I try to tell them that it is hard to remember everything everybody is up to, and that furthermore, being older, my memory banks…
I will have you know it’s difficult to write a story when the voices of Ross and Rachel from Friends insist on being the mental-voice narrators. Though, they’re maybe a little better than Scrooge McDuck, who was more often the hazard when my kids were little. But still, very disruptive!
Sometimes we do what we call family karaoke night, where each person gets to pick a few songs and we bring them up on YouTube with lyrics to sing along to. Recently this was our line-up. (And yes, it does seem obvious that two-thirds of these songs were chosen by people over 40. …but can you tell which two-thirds?)
When you’ve got a sick kid, the job of the parent is the push any sort of real food that they’ll willingly eat like it’s crack. (bagels here today) Note, if they’re still pretty little, the other job is to watch the same Disney movie 3-4 times in one day. (Tangled, back in the day, and so glad Frozen hadn’t come out yet at that point)