When my kids make pretend food, most of it is pretty silly. The pizza has gummy bears, almost everything has chocolate chips, and their milk or water is often coffee. Where these eating habits have been modeled for them is a discussion for another time.
My two-year-old was playing with some toy ice cream and came running over insisting that I have some. Who am I to turn down pretend ice cream? I took a few fake bites, make the required “nom nom nom” sounds and thanked her for the treat. “Do you want some more?” she asked. Calorie free ice cream? You bet! She took the plastic cone back from me, took a few steps then turned back around and said “I’ll get you another one, this one has pee on it.”
Excuse me? Pee on my pretend ice cream? So many questions here. First, what? Second, where did this come from? How would the idea of pee getting on ice cream enter her little brain? I get that with little kids there is a lot of talk about bodily functions and the proper place to have them, but never has on top of a frozen treat entered the equation before.
After being taken aback, it didn’t take me long to answer some of my own questions.If I could look inside my daughter’s imagination, I’m sure there were a lot things swirling around in there and the “ice cream topping” idea and the “pee” concept crashed into each other and tumbled out of her mouth. So while this is weird, kids are weird and I get that.
However, the more I thought about it I had more questions for this imaginary ice cream shoppe. (I assume this is an imaginary shoppe rather than shop – she’s got whimsy like that.) How did the pee get on there? Was it served to me normally then somebody peed on it? Or is this the kind of establishment that would serve me pee ice cream? I sure hope not. I would like to give my kid the benefit of the doubt that she wouldn’t serve me pee ice cream in the first place. But maybe she did. Maybe this was a whole set up to get her dad to eat pee? Diabolical.
Do I need to start placing special order at the pretend restaurant and sending food back should it have not enough cheese or too much pee? Should I start asking to speak to the imaginary manager? I really don’t want to be that imaginary person. But if i get pee on my pretend ice cream on a normal day, what would she do if I don’t leave an imaginary tip?
I Think Therefore I Dad 