Imagination kicks in

The Peanut has been telling a lot of stories lately. For people like me (a professional writer/book nerd/amateur Virginia Woolf scholar/former journalist) and her daddy (an engineer with a novel in progress) this is a pretty exciting development.

First there were the bananas. Specifically, the Silly Talking Bananas who live in our house and one of our neighbors' houses. There are 10 of them, five boys and five girls, and they apparently come and visit the Peanut and her stuffed animals during the night. "Me and Main Ted and Pink Ted and Day Care Bear laughed and laughed," she says, using the names her daddy and I have for some of her teddy bears. Sometimes we have to hurry home from school because the bananas are waiting to play with us.

Then today there was a monster, which the Peanut vanquished with the help of her purple origami crane. There for a while she was very afraid of the dark, and Mr. Fraulein made a bunch of cranes to sit on her dresser and watch over her as she sleeps, just as his mother had done for him when he was little. She decided to bring the purple crane to school, and she cradled it in her lap as she sat in her car seat.

"My crane can shoot fire from its nose like a dragon," she said. "The monster is coming very close to my school, and he wants to get my friends, but they're hiding. So the crane is shooting fire at him but the fire won't get my friends. And then the monster goes up in the air."

"I see," I respond. "So is the monster gone now?"

"He went up in the air. But my crane will chase him away if he comes back."