Sorting Reality from Fiction

"A boy hit his head with a bottle!" Sydney declared, a few days ago, apropos of nothing, "but he okay kapuz his friend pick him up."

"Oh, I see," I said, trying to process a) what she was talking about and b) where she'd witnessed such an event. These days I have to navigate carefully through these statements to get at what she's really talking about. If I ask directly, she'll reply, "Stop talking to me!" and then she'll end the conversation and I'll be no wiser. So I try to sort it out in a round about way.

"Did you see this on the computer?" Maybe it was a Sesame Street scene?

"No," she said.

I tried a different tactic. "What was the boy wearing?"

"A jacket and a coat," she said, emphatically, and then she moved on to another subject. "You a BOY!! How you doin? It's so nice to see you!!"

Maybe she dreamt it. Maybe it was part of a conversation. Maybe she made it up.

Maybe, I don't want to know.

Kapuz

I make up stories and I make up games and I immediately regret it because whatever I invent we'll play for days on end. Take, for instance, Whappowong, which is when you suddenly flop down on the grass with your legs in the air and then you drop the legs suddenly--wong-- which is very funny and also, it turns out, funny on the twenty or ninetieth try.

I made up a talking hand puppet when Sydney was 9 or 10 months old called Tickle Monster. Then I made up another one called Cousin Tickle Monster. Some days, Sydney will only talk to Tickle Monster or Cousin Tickle Monster and not to me. Somehow she trusts them, even though they often tickle her instead of answering questions. "Hi Tickle Monster! How you doin'?" she'll say, looking directly at my curled up hand. "I'm good, Syd, how are you?" I'll say in my normal non-Tickle-Monster voice. "NO TALK! Just Tickle Monster!" she'll tell me. Sigh. I used to be so much more than just a hand.

Sydney's favorite joke is to call me a boy. "You a BOY!!" she'll yell joyfully. Recently she's been told that actually her mother is a woman. "You a WOMAN!!" she'll yell at her father, generally in a particularly crowded grocery store.

She's starting to rationalize things too. The other day she told me that she couldn't sit on the potty "kapuz it pinch me."

"It.. what?"

"Kapuz it pinch me!"

"Kapuz?"

"You don' unnerstann!" she said, sorrowfully, an expression I've used often to let her know that I'm trying to figure out what she's saying, but don't quite get it yet.

"Say it again, I'll understand this time," I said, helpfully, hoping it was true.

"No potty, kapuz it pinch me!" she said, impatiently.

"OH! Because it pinched you! I see..." it had pinched her the other day, accidentally. I let her know I fixed the potty and all was well, and we went on to our customary "I don't half to be brave" which means that she won't get a "soap bath" tonight and won't have to endure the agony of getting her hair washed.

Kapuz we all know how bad that is. Just, you know, kapuz.