May the Good Team Win

"Do you want to be a bad guy or a good guy?" Caed inquired as he fashioned legos into fighter planes.  

"I'll be the lunch lady", I said, scraping out the last few helpings of peanut butter.  "You want to eat, don't you?"

"No, you hafta choose a side.  There's no such thing as the lunch lady in this game." He was starting to sound exasperated.  "Come on, Mommy, what are you going to be?"

"Alright then, I'll be the bad guy."  I sided with the outlaws as I spread the last bit of jelly into place, knowing he doesn't like to be called the bad guy, even if just an imaginary one.  

"No, I really think you should be the good guy," he countered.  "We'll just make Dani the bad guy.  Cuz if you are the bad guy, you'll have to fight 'gainst the good guys.  And you would win, and we don't want the bad guys to win.  So you should be a good guy, with me."

(We'll ignore for the time being the part about him enthusiastically assigning his baby sister to a lose-lose situation.)  

I stopped my sandwich making and found his eyes.  He looked up expectantly, offering this reluctant co-pilot a freshly constructed, primary-colored weapon of imaginary destruction.  I couldn't help but smile straight back at my fellow good guy.

While we whirled and whooshed and bombed and blasted, I relished in this:

My son still wants me on his team.  

He thinks whatever side I'm on will win.  

He wants to make sure the good guys win, and he believes I can help.  

And that sure beats being the lunch lady.

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Visit Emily at Chatting at the Sky for her new Tuesdays Unwrapped series...discovering gifts in the midst of the ordinary.