What If?

"Mami, what would you buy if you could have anything you wanted out of the World Warehouse, for only 100 dollars?

"If you could have one power...

"If you could change one thing in the world..."

When X begins one of these, I have a small feeling of dread. My answers will never measure up. If I say, "World Peace," she will say, "You can get that if you get something more general. Try again."

I can buy time by asking her to answer first. Because she always has an elaborate answer prepared in advance. The answer to the 100 dollar shopping spree goes something like this: "Every video game console and game ever made, one of every single candy ever made, a couple hundred iPhones, five of every single Tamagachi on the market in the USA and Japan, a very big vacation house in Ess Eff, Cee Aaay...

There are 100 items on the list; I stopped taking them down.

I have a hard time listening as well as answering. First, I start worrying that X is too acquisitive. (But my bigger worry--or worry that I should have a worry--is yet to come.) Then I just get bored and find myself rounding the corner into my own little world. I will pop back in for, "a shopping spree at the world's biggest mall."

I hate board games and card games, too. Except Scrabble. Once upon a time, I remember playing Risk for hours with my sisters when I was X's age, and I feel for my only child...but I can't bear to play, say, Parcheesi. I was so proud of her for making that model car with motor, but my own involvement in it was minimal.

I go back and forth on whether this is bad parenting or not. Maybe I have even written about it before, I can't recall. Or maybe it was Anna over at End of Motherhood? Anyway, the kid knows how to entertain herself. But we both live in our own little worlds a lot. It's particularly obvious when D is gone, as he is this weekend.

You know, I lived in my own world a lot as a child, too. I visited my sisters' world to get in the games of Risk, then would retreat into my sanctuary--my messy bedroom where I would burn candles and melt spoonfuls of wax. Which X would do if I let her.

I have no good ending for this post.