Dad, Will You Tell Story?

Earlier today I had a nice conversation with a guy who has a two year old son, and who is palpably excited about that fact.  He couldn't wait to tell me about the joy of it; about how exciting it is to watch his son grasp new concepts, or develop new motor skills; about how he's excited to teach him how to fish and hunt, and to work with wood and fix machinery.

I can't help but feel like that kid is lucky to have that guy for a dad.  I am genuinely happy for both of them, it feels to me as though he's coming at this from all the right angles.  There's a lot of joy in the future for both of them, and that makes me happy.

My daughter is somewhat older than two, and I found myself reminiscing today about that age and what was going on in my life at that time.  I don't know what word means the opposite of 'regret'...  I looked it up, and am not satisfied with the answers I found; they don't seem to do it justice.  Whatever the right word is, that's what I feel about it.  There's one thing in particular that I don't regret, and that is "The Story".

Somewhere around year three, at bedtime, I'd be the one to get her tucked in and off to sleep.  For a while we'd read books; lots of Disney stories at bedtime, in fact I read Peter Pan so many times that I ended up doing a blog about an alternate version of that story since I had thought about it way too much.  "Snow White" too.  It can get a bit tedious, so I'd inevitably end up interjecting my own riffs into the stories to try to make my daughter laugh, or to catch her off guard, or make her think about something differently, and eventually I ended up just putting the books down and making up the story from scratch.

Most nights, for many years, we told the story.  As she got older, it became more and more complicated and involved, and I got to watch her mind grow and her interests and sense of humor develop faster and faster, until by now she's reading full chapter novels but still wants to hear the story and it's all I can do to come up with material.  I consider myself incredibly lucky in that I've had this opportunity.

I never have a plan when we settle in to tell it, it happens entirely extemporaneously every single time.  Both of us are characters in the story, as are our real world selves.  Occasionally we'll poke our heads into the story and give advice to the characters in real time.  Many characters have come and gone, and of course there have been some recurring themes that get revisited often and which I am constantly challenged to spin in new and interesting ways.

There are, for example, 24 baby dragons, many of which have complex backstories - there are parent figure dragons who vaguely resemble the Mrs. and me, but who are typically just along for the ride with whatever the main characters are doing.  There's a wizard named Gary, assorted superheros, a parrot named Wolfie, and dozens more.  There's a helicopter that can transform into a spaceship and travel to the moon to deliver pizzas or to the sun to run rescue operations for lava dogs.  We've driven tanks through towns, and up the sides of rainbows, and have saved the earth from alien invasions.

The plot is fluid, and it's not just up to me to advance it.  I roll with any interjection that she comes up with and build it in.  If it's taking too long for me to get the characters to a place, she'll open a portal and skip the travel.  Portals, of course, require special ingredients to open.  I've never been able to list an ingredient so obscure that the heroine hasn't had it handily available in her pocket, including a toenail from a frog that's so poisonous it has a one mile kill radius and just sits on a rock in the center of a circle of bare ground feeling lonely because he can't find a girlfriend.  She found him a girlfriend, got the toenail, and opened the portal.

The story is awesome.  It would take me about 7 years to explain everything.

Sometimes I can't do it.  Sometimes I'm too tired and I can't make my brain do it and I end up just falling asleep there with her for an hour or whatever.  But mostly I can, and when I hear those words "Dad, will you tell story?", even at my most tired and miserable and sore and grown-up and boring, I say "Heck yeah I'll tell story, let me know when you're done brushing your teeth and I'll be right up!"

I've made plenty of mistakes, but I don't think this is one of them.

I don't want to miss it.  I want to see what happens next.