We had a battle in the living room this weekend, one of those knock-down, dragout family brawls that people usually laugh about once the cuts and bruises have healed and all the dental work has been repaired.
It was fun. Of course, it was also almost completely imaginary.
I had been promising my son for several days that we would get his Masters of the Universe figures out for a battle royal. Sunday afternoon the time had finally come to unleash the dogs of war.
We moved Castle Grayskull (or the Castle of Grayskull as my son likes to call it) to center stage on the living room floor and then began to arrange the forces of heroes and villains for their long awaited final conflict.
One thing emerged very quickly, there was no telling who was actually on which side. My son typically assigns the status of hero or villain dependent entirely upon how much he likes the character.
The villainous, spider-like Webstor with his multiple red eyes and snaggletoothed fangs is almost always a hero based solely on his nifty zip line in a backpack gimmick. Conversely, the heroic Man-E-Faces, he of the rotating head with three different faces (human, robot and monster), was often a villain with his face usually on the monster setting.
Thanks to my younger daughter, Man-E-Faces had axe in hand and was giving the “heroic human periscope” Mekaneck a very tough time.
Did I not mention my younger daughter got into the brawl as well? She did. Time was both girls would jump in to play He-Man with their little brother.
My oldest daughter is still not entirely above such imaginative play but having recently turned 13, videochatting with her friends has become slightly more important than keeping Castle Grayskull from falling into the hands of Skeletor. What amazed me as I watched my two youngest kids set up the increasingly elaborate battlefield was how calmly and peacefully they worked together. Each of them gravitated to the figures they liked best and began equipping them with little plastic swords and laser guns.
It wasn’t boys versus girls. It wasn’t brother versus sister. They both just wanted to make the the coolest battle scene they could and then have me take some pictures with my phone for posterity.
It was all very friendly for a pitched battle. I was very impressed by their creative cooperation. Mind you, I knew the peace couldn’t last.
It wasn’t long after the battle for Castle Grayskull that they were yelling at each other in a debate over who farted on who first.
Thankfully, all the axes swords and clubs were so tiny only action figures could use them.
