tales for dreamers: playtime

You only need a few items for playtime. Mostly stuff you’d find lying discarded around your home. In all the unexpected places, though.

Look inside the last sack of rice in your pantry, look under the bookshelf where you’re sure nobody ever goes but they do, look not under the bed but just under the pillow, look inside the laundry basket, preferably before you dump your weeks-old load into the machine, and, of course, look inside the freezer section of your refrigerator where the giant tub of ice-cream should have sat undisturbed throughout winter but was replaced long ago with something far too innocuous to annoy you.

And maybe, just maybe, if you’re lucky enough, you’ll find an oversized dog, an undersized dinosaur, a medium-sized bulldozer, and an abundant length of glitzy green string.

The dinosaur breathes out fire (Wait, shouldn’t it be a dragon then? No, thank you.) and the dog spurts water to douse the flames. The bulldozer runs on fire, every dino-breath energising it to rev up its engine, a very noisy affair that makes the dino want to cover its ears and fly away.

Sometimes the dino dumps the ball of string on the dog or the bulldozer to entangle them, but they always manage to escape on the strength of their own might or the other’s aid.

Enraged, the dino stomps across the town, snorting and blowing fire everywhere. But oh, the white sheet is a land of snow and on days when it is cold enough, the dino’s fire-breath is snuffed out even before it can leave its mouth.

I don’t think the dino is having much fun. There’s simply no way for it to win. (But it still wants to play.)