I had heard about the Red House before. This is my 6 year old's other house and it often is where he has, "many of Thomas stuff," and where his Red House family lives. I found out yesterday that Red House was actually a planet and on this planet Harry's other mother and father had, "died in a 'splosion."
"Oh?"
"Yes! It was huge! They were made into bones and they died."
"I'm sorry to hear that!"
"But I have many of brothers and sisters and they didn't die. They were in tent, a metal tent. But my parents died so I came to this planet."
"Well, we're sure happy you did."
"I'm glad too but I miss my brothers and sisters. I need to build a portal so I can go get them."
"How will you do that?"
"Hmmmmm....I know! I can use my Digivice!"
This is the point where Catherine and I stopped exchanging weird looks and started laughing. A Digivice is a a tool from Digimon. Now we were in familiar territory and the conversation that was previously freaky and morbid was now turning out to be about Digimon. Pokemon and dragons soon made their way into the story as well. I have no idea where the Red House planet or the crispified parents came from but I'll simply assume he picked up some images somewhere and incorporated them into what he thought was a thrilling and dramatic story. I look forward, I think, to more.
4 comments:
Oooooh, now this sounds like this Red House might be located somewhere near RBK world. RBK world is where Robot Boy & Kirby live, or used to live. So many inhabitants have come and gone from RBK world. I've heard about ice cream lakes, superhuman powers, I can't even begin to explain it all because there's so much to it. It's the main world of the daily narrative that my children have merely shortened to "RBK"... "c'mon, RBK" or "wanna play RBK?" and they run off not to be seen again for hours. I've taken to laying in bed for too long in the a.m. with a kid snuggling on each side just so I might be privileged to learn a tidbit or two about this place, Michael lets info sneak out in conversation, but Hope rarely does. The powerpuffs and pokemon people hang out in this world too, and Diva (our white cat) has recently traveled there through a portal (it's the only way you can get to these places from reality) to work on her world domination plot in peace... World Domination is expected to take place next Saturday. Be forewarned.
Hmmmm, I wanted to see how RBK world compares to your Red House world, so I just asked "what's RBK world like?". I got these answers:
"lots of magic, lots of bizarre creatures, no grownups except famous grownups like Bill Nye, lots of technology like a floating city in outer space orbiting the Earth called the Space City"
but now I will end this because they are making me correct my typing errors. Earth should be capitalized, Space City should be capitalized, if I mention portals Portal should be capitalized. Ahhhhhhhh, homeschoolers! Too darn smart!
Phew, they're gone, the peanut gallery that is. They were extremely interested in the Red House. I think they thought you were weird for saying your son was freaky! I told them you just weren't use to having stories about pretend worlds in your house yet :-)
Notice the absence of parents in these mind worlds? It must be where they test out how they'd live on their own. Seems to me I read in some John Holt books perhaps about the scenarios played out in pretend worlds, how they can safely test independence and think about how they'd react in response to situations without the danger or stress of the real thing. Cool.
I think you're dead on about why they do it. I have to admit, I even do it as an adult at times, imagine worst case scenarios and what I would do in them.
What made this a little freaky for me was simply that I wasn't used to hearing this kind of thing from Harry. He's all about Thomas and often his imaginative talk is all about Thomas and the island of Sodor. This was out of the ordinary. But fun too.
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