Chess and Star Wars Legos
Given what I understand of Ethan’s personality, I’ve been surprised at his intrigue with the game of chess. It started at the library (at least my knowledge of it), where there are a few chessboards near the older-kid comic books and graphic novels (Ethan’s affinity to which is completely consistent with his general disposition, including the fascination with the depiction of females within them).
He really wanted to play chess one day, and I figured we’d last about 3 minutes before he got bored, since there are so many rules. He lasted a lot longer, and despite griping about not being able to move pawns backwards, not being allowed to capture every piece under the knights 3-square move, and moaning when I took his pieces, he seemed to enjoy it.
Since then he’s memorized how to set up the board, and has learned how to move many of the pieces. He’s starting to think about the moves ahead of time, although it’s still a challenge to figure out how to let him win. As far as I can tell, the parts he likes about the game are: it’s about war, there are rules, you get to capture the other person’s pieces and keep them on your side, and repeatedly count them and taunt the other person that you’re winning (because if you’re not winning you cry and complain).
Ethan is also quite obsessed with Star War Legos. The more of them you have, the cooler you are, according to Ethan. He doesn’t really like putting together the kits, even the easy ones, but he likes having the finished space ships and figures. He makes little scenes with the pieces – with good guys on one side, and bad guys on the other, both aiming various weapons at each other.
Notice the war/fight/weapons theme? The other day we were playing with lego Darth Vadar and lego Luke Skywalker and they were having a lightsaber fight. Wooze, wooze, wooze (lightsaber noises). I was getting tired, not just of being told everything to do and not being allowed to make up any dialogue myself, but all this violence is not my favorite thing. So I finally said out of exasperation something like, “Can’t we have a tea party”, which was supposed to be ironic and funny.
Actually, he liked the idea (which suggests to me that he doesn’t know about the general gender preferences for this activity). He dutifully got out what passes for our tea set (a set of toy garden tools with the pots serving as tea cups), and started pouring tea. But to my dismay, the violence quickly returned when a tiger came to attack the tea party, and suddenly it was the host wielding a piece of orange Hotwheels car track as a sword (anything long will do!) to defend against the dangerous feline. And so it goes with all games – they all digress into some sort of fight that involves guns, swords, and a certain amount of pounding, hitting, slashing and pretend injuries.
He really wanted to play chess one day, and I figured we’d last about 3 minutes before he got bored, since there are so many rules. He lasted a lot longer, and despite griping about not being able to move pawns backwards, not being allowed to capture every piece under the knights 3-square move, and moaning when I took his pieces, he seemed to enjoy it.
Since then he’s memorized how to set up the board, and has learned how to move many of the pieces. He’s starting to think about the moves ahead of time, although it’s still a challenge to figure out how to let him win. As far as I can tell, the parts he likes about the game are: it’s about war, there are rules, you get to capture the other person’s pieces and keep them on your side, and repeatedly count them and taunt the other person that you’re winning (because if you’re not winning you cry and complain).
Ethan is also quite obsessed with Star War Legos. The more of them you have, the cooler you are, according to Ethan. He doesn’t really like putting together the kits, even the easy ones, but he likes having the finished space ships and figures. He makes little scenes with the pieces – with good guys on one side, and bad guys on the other, both aiming various weapons at each other.
Notice the war/fight/weapons theme? The other day we were playing with lego Darth Vadar and lego Luke Skywalker and they were having a lightsaber fight. Wooze, wooze, wooze (lightsaber noises). I was getting tired, not just of being told everything to do and not being allowed to make up any dialogue myself, but all this violence is not my favorite thing. So I finally said out of exasperation something like, “Can’t we have a tea party”, which was supposed to be ironic and funny.
Actually, he liked the idea (which suggests to me that he doesn’t know about the general gender preferences for this activity). He dutifully got out what passes for our tea set (a set of toy garden tools with the pots serving as tea cups), and started pouring tea. But to my dismay, the violence quickly returned when a tiger came to attack the tea party, and suddenly it was the host wielding a piece of orange Hotwheels car track as a sword (anything long will do!) to defend against the dangerous feline. And so it goes with all games – they all digress into some sort of fight that involves guns, swords, and a certain amount of pounding, hitting, slashing and pretend injuries.
posted by AttitudeAdopt | 12:31 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home