Belly draggers

At the end of year celebration in Daniel's previous classroom, his teachers gave him the "Most Imaginative" award. Lately he has lived up to that title well.

It all started a few weeks ago. Mommy was trying to use the bathroom in peace and Daniel wanted to come in. I locked the door, which didn't sit well with him. But so far as I knew, that was that.

Later that night when I was lying down with him before bed I asked him if Mommy loves him all the time or just some of the time. Without missing a beat he replied "you didn't love me when you were in the bathroom!"

Then he said that while I was in the bathroom no one was taking care of him and the belly draggers came and took him away. They carried him off on their spikes which hurt his back and wanted to eat him. Then he said "here they are again, at my door!"

Lying there next to him in his bed, I felt like I was taking a pop quiz I was thoroughly unprepared for. I knew that one of these days he'd be afraid of imaginary creatures but I hadn't expected it this soon and hadn't thought about how to address it. His class was studying dinosaurs that week so I figured they must have talked about how some of them were "belly draggers." 

So thinking on the fly I decided to address the belly draggers now presumably crouched in the doorway. " You silly belly draggers," I said, "this is Daniel, not Danube. You're in the wrong house!" I told Daniel that the belly draggers were looking for their boy, Danube, and had just come to the wrong house on accident. Then in another voice the belly draggers said "Oops, sorry!"

Then I told Daniel if the belly draggers ever came back he could shake his toy rattlesnake (which, by coincidence, a teacher had just given him) at them and it would scare them away. He laughed and seemed satisfied by that, and I patted myself on the back for a crisis averted.

A few days later I was reading to Daniel's class (one of the perks of self-employment, if I want to go read to my son's class in the middle of the day I don't have to tell anyone or ask permission, I just go). I asked his teacher if they had talked about "belly draggers" and she hadn't heard the term. I wondered where he got it from but didn't really think about again.

Then the other day he was showing us his yoga poses and he said he was going from downward dog to belly dragger. Hmm, I thought. Sure enough I asked one of the extended care teachers the next day and she said belly dragger was one of their yoga poses.

So on his own, he synthesized dinosaurs and belly draggers and turned them into something that came and stole him away while Mommy was in the bathroom. Imaginative indeed.

(For the record, I wasn't even in the bathroom more than a minute. Those belly draggers are sneaky and fast, apparently!)