Let's Play it Again, Dad! |

by Nick Hayden
June 10, 2016

“A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, Do it again; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough… It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again, to the sun; and every evening, Do it again, to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” -Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I have kids, three of them. The middle child, Serenity, is four, and her favorite game, which she requests nearly everyday, is a little romp she calls “Shopkins.”

The game is called Shopkins because it centers around me playing the part of her five Shopkin Happy Meal toys as they are introduce to her various friends. These friends are normally stuffed animals, though Renny’s baby sister, her Elsa carpet, and Darth Tater have all enjoyed the company of the Shopkins.

For a parent, the game can be rather…trying. In its early days, it consisted of Renny saying things like, “Have the Shopkins try to find Froggie,” and then being told, no matter how creatively the Shopkins went about trying the climb the couch upon which Froggie waited, that “They can’t come up here,” but that they should keep trying.

Serenity with Perfumey, Stompy, Dressy, and Shoey. Crowny is still playing an unfinished game of hide-and-seek.

Over time, though, the Shopkins have developed their own personalities. Let me introduce you to them. Shoey is a pair of shoes. She’s very timid and afraid of nearly everything. However, she did learn to fly from a small purple owl once, and now if she says “Tweet, tweet, hoot, hoot” in a singsong voice, she can float about.

Stompy is a pair of sandals. He’s grumpy and he stomps things. Sometimes Renny tells him that he can’t stomp on things today.

Perfumey is a perfume bottle. (Clever names, I know.) He’s the straight man. He loves meeting new people, adventures that aren’t too frightening, and dancing. Actually, all the Shopkins love dancing and will break into a hoedown on the spot.

Dressy (an evening gown) is the matron of the group. She’s the grandmother of Crowny. She’s a bit overbearing, always thinks she knows best, and its quite the safety fiend/worrywart. Crowny is naive, blithly happy, and rather annoyingly insistent.

And now you know more about the Shopkins than you ever wanted to.

I’ve created these personalities (and voices–you should hear the voices) partly to add flair to what can be a rather repetitious “game.”

But a funny thing happened during these play sessions. The Shopkins gained a life of their own. They stick their voices in occasionally even when we aren’t playing. The kids recognize them and even ask for stories about them. Just yesterday, Dressy was saying she wouldn’t mind going down to the basement with Renny as long as they took baby-repellent. Fyo literally did a face-palm, knowing how ridiculous Dressy was being. (But she always is. She can’t help it. She’s Dickensonian.) These aren’t little plastic figures. They’re friends who take trips to space, cross the ocean, and meet with all manner of fluffy creature. They gained life because Renny invests in them again and again. I may have given them voice, but she saw them as living before I made them speak.

We mature adults, with the whole world of knowledge and entertainment at our fingertips, sometimes forget how to play like a child–to pare everything down to one or two things and invest ourselves in them, over and over and over, not because it’ll look good on a resume or make us smarter or keep us up with culture, but simply because we like it. We think a man must know everything, do everything, travel everywhere. But I am not sure if we’re driven to do such things from desire or boredom. For there is a whole world in an empty box or on a swing or in the same ordinary book, if we will only look. Or, as Renny knows full well, we might find an entire drama of adventure and friendship in a handful of Happy Meal toys.