Putting the Glad in Gladiator

Tonight, both boys greeted me, as I walked in the door, in the usual fashion. One gets wind of my arrival and screams "Daddy!!!!" and runs to the door, throwing themselves at me, and the other quickly follows suit, sometimes with a variation on the "Daddy!" exclamation. I usually scoop them up and swing them around in a small circle, and then proceed to put down two laptops, my coffee glass [sic - I drive with a glass of coffee in the morning - how very Russian, you might say, except that it's coffee, rather than tea...] In any case, I then go on to say hello to Madeleine, who is usually absorbed in something compelling - perhaps some video - and is often naked, even in Febraury in northern New England... This Rainbow-Gathering culture, for our three-year-old, is certainly not encouraged, but you can't really stop it, either.

In any case, tonight's twist on the protocol was when Daniel, clad in his spiffy blue-and-red Spiderman pajamas, ran off, grabbed his two cloth-covered, floppy foam-swords, and instantly challenged me to a duel, even before the laptops were safely tucked away. I got the blue-handled sword; Daniel got the red-handled one. We pursued the boring-old trying-to-stab-each-other thing for a few minutes, before Daniel figured out a magnificent improvisation on the practice, involving each of us barefoot in the family room (he instructed me to take off my shoes; the socks were optional). We skipped in rapid circles around the rug in the middle of the room, sword in hand, and Daniel proceeded to sing "Charrah charahh charahh, Challai, challai, challai!" over and over again. I sang it too, but he didn't particularly encourage this; he told me I could just listen, although I was still expected to skip. Daniel told me I could either skip or gallop, but skipping seemed to be the preferred choreography.

Occasionally, these circular, choral dances would be interrupted by a spontaneous charge, one gladiator against the other, to seize a sudden advantage, followed again by a return to the frolicking choreography.

But toward the beginning, it seemed we were really getting down to business. Prior to the infusion of dance and song, Daniel had set down some basic standards for sword-fighting, and upgraded them to a more manly calibre in mid-sentence:

"When somebody quits, the other person wins - actually, when somebody gets stabbed."

(February 8, 2012)