I was going to write an adventure where the parents have a secret magic life, but there were two things that killed it: one, that great-idea-but-horrid-execution film came out with Arnie and Jame Lee Curtis, and second . . . if parents had access to a magic world, why the hell would they stick with middle class mundanity here, and not share the multiverse with the kids?
Another possibility is to have the parents' secret magical life be a fantasy (in the psychological sense) of the children. Calvin & Hobbes touched on this idea once or twice.
It also occurs to me that the secret magical life which a child creates for a parent might not be the kind of magical life that parent would have chosen for him/herself.
Well, one kid's fabulous multiverse might well be another parent's anxiety-producing nightmare. A kid would think the world of Jurassic Park (silly science aside) sounded great. As a parent I gotta say: Not so much. I like my friendly animals smaller.
I used to reflect on this when I was teaching: I'd look at those kids gleefully writing their bloodthirsty stories for me, and though I read them aloud with relish (they just loved to have their stories read aloud with full dramatic intonations) I would think, "You know nothing about pain. And may many years pass before you do."
There definitely can be pain, but (like always) different sorts.
The pains that I thought of when kids wrote those stories was the blithe forgetting that violence actually hurts . . . that, for example, when you sock a bad guy, however much he deserved it, 1) your hand will hurt and 2) it's unlikely he'll go away and trouble you no more.
The second, more profound pain that so many didn't know was of not knowing a safe place.
I don't know those particular kids, but sometimes those stories don't come out of a lack of understanding of pain, but rather are wish-fulfillment fantasies about a world in which pain doesn't hurt and the monsters can be vanquished with a sword and without guilt (because they aren't your parents or schoolmates.)
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I was going to write an adventure where the parents have a secret magic life, but there were two things that killed it: one, that great-idea-but-horrid-execution film came out with Arnie and Jame Lee Curtis, and second . . . if parents had access to a magic world, why the hell would they stick with middle class mundanity here, and not share the multiverse with the kids?
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I used to reflect on this when I was teaching: I'd look at those kids gleefully writing their bloodthirsty stories for me, and though I read them aloud with relish (they just loved to have their stories read aloud with full dramatic intonations) I would think, "You know nothing about pain. And may many years pass before you do."
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The pains that I thought of when kids wrote those stories was the blithe forgetting that violence actually hurts . . . that, for example, when you sock a bad guy, however much he deserved it, 1) your hand will hurt and 2) it's unlikely he'll go away and trouble you no more.
The second, more profound pain that so many didn't know was of not knowing a safe place.
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Is it feasible to child-proof your magic world?
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