Prince John

Sydney has continued to be fixated on Robin Hood as of late... telling us that she is Robin Hood and asking her dad or me to be the Bear (Little John). Beyond the assigning of names, there isn't a whole lot to being Robin Hood. Sometimes she pretends to be splashing in the water (like Robin Hood and Little John do at the beginning of the film) and sometimes she talks about the candle in her hat (I believe the word she is searching for is arrow, but whatever). Mostly, she just calls herself Robin Hood and bosses me and her dad into following her around the house, "C'mon Bear, let's go!"

The thing that has come out of all of this that I find to be hysterical is the arrival at our house of Prince John himself.

Check him out:

You see him, right? He's right there in the picture. In Sydney's hand. Yep, there's Prince John alright.

She carries him around like that, occasionally setting him down carefully on the furniture. She speaks to him in streams of chatter: "Prince John, you okay? Prince John, you wanna be alright? Prince John, where did you go? Prince John, I'm gonna put you right there." When you ask her where he is, she will give an alarmed, "Oh no, where did Prince John go? I go find him. Be right back!" And she will run off to another room and return with him in her hand. She pitched a big old fit in the parking lot today when her father and I had to hold her hands because it meant that she did not have a free hand with which to hold Prince John.

Is Prince John just a phase? Will she forget about him in another week? Is he just another facet of the Robin Hood phase? Or is he an actual honest-to-goodness imaginary friend?

I'm kind of hoping for the latter. I didn't know about imaginary friends until I was too old to have one, and then I felt jipped that not only did I have trouble making friends at school but I was also not cool enough to have an imaginary friend to play with. My mother tried to make me feel better by telling me that I had an imaginary teacher who I blamed my poor behavior on. (Miss Cynthia said I could, Mommy. Miss Cynthia said it was okay, Mommy.) That just made it worse. I was such a nerd that I made up teachers instead of playmates.

Anyway, I think it would be cool if Prince John hung out for a while.