Let’s Pretend…

I absolutely hate playing pretend with my daughter. I know that this sounds heartless, but when I hear her sweet little voice say, “Okay, let’s pretend you saw this kitty and you wanted to adopt her,” it is all I can do to not roll my eyes so far back in their sockets that I look like Little Orphan Annie in her comic strip incarnation.

Don’t get me wrong, I play. I will be the best kitty mama, pony queen, or pet buyer this side of the Mississippi. Scratch that. Both sides of the Mississippi. I know drama. I throw it daily. But the only reason I even entertain the thought of prancing with my hooves held high is because I don’t want to scar my daughter and have her go into therapy claiming no one ever loved her enough to play with her and that’s why she’s now a neurotic cat hoarding mess.

I am not a cat hoarder, but I don’t remember my parents playing games with me when I was younger. At least not games geared to my age range. Candy Land? Nope. Chutes and Ladders? Didn’t even know how to play until I played with my own kids. We played Trivial Pursuit, Facts in Five, or anything else that required useless knowledge. I am not bitter. In fact, I have a great love of useless knowledge and a nerdy passion for research. Did you know that there have been two yellow Labs on Downton Abbey? The first was Pharaoh and the second, Isis. Pharaoh was there for season one, died somewhere between seasons one and two and was replaced by Isis. True story. You’re welcome.

So, I may not like playing pretend, I do it. I do it because I love my daughter and I want her to have happy memories of the time we spend together. But, if she doesn’t remember this and chooses to remember the time the cheese slipped of my cracker and I screamed like a banshee when she didn’t put her shoes on when I asked her to, well, then I might become a crazy cat hoarder. Which is really a shame because while I like cats, I am not a huge fan of litter boxes, cat hair or animals with abscesses and mucousy eyes.