🦋 Titles and subtitles
One of Sylvia's standard games is "ice cream shop". Here is how it works: she finds a place to stand behind which will function as the counter, and asks "What do you want for ice cream?" You say what (my preference is usually pistachio), she turns away and spends a minute pantomiming the preparation of a dish of ice cream, then turns back and says "Here you go!" -- your part then is to make appreciative sounds and say "Thank you", sometimes there is an exchange of "money" as well. Variations -- sometimes the roles are reversed, there may be a "menu", the preparation step may be longer or may be split into a couple of steps. Maybe you'll ask for a more complicated dish, or for a beverage as well. This afternoon we were taking turns being the customer, and also had some turns of "sandwich shop" and "dinner shop". Then I started getting bored with the whole food thing so I suggested, let's try "book shop" this time. And it turned out to be a great suggestion! She was playing the proprietor of the shop, and she asked me "What do you want for a book?" I said "I'd like a... dinosaur book -- what kind of dinosaur books do you have?" So she started pointing at the shelves in her shop and naming the titles -- she came up with a title/subtitle formula of "X's: why they Y" where X is the dinosaur and Y is an action it performs. A few I remember are "Dinosaurs: Why They are Big"; "T. Rex: Why They Eat Things"; "Stegosaurus: Why They Have Spiky Tails"... I asked for the book about stegosauri, and when I asked how much it costs she said "No, this is a library." So I thought, this seems like a pretty successful game, let's try and keep it going. So I said "Ok, I'm taking it home now..." and pantomimed driving home with the book, and Sylvia was into that, and when we got out of the car, I asked if she would read the book to me. And she did! I don't remember the text of it but there were a couple of loosely organized paragraphs about stegosaurus fighting with other dinosaurs -- and the illusion of there being a book was maintained -- she was looking at the book instead of at me as she narrated, and cooed "turn the page" when she got to the end of a page. As the book came to an end she ran back to her shop and said "Now let's do [video] tape store! What do you want for a tape?" "Hmm... do you have any tapes about animals?" Again, she pointed to the shelves and named the titles... two I remember are "Doggies: Why They Woof" and "Dolphins: Why They Swim", which is the one I asked for; and we drove home, and after some negotiation as to the location of the T.V. and where we were going to sit, we sat down to watch it. She loaded up the tape and pressed start. I was not sure where to go from here (watching video is less interactive than reading a story) -- but I asked her, "can you tell me what is going on in the movie?" -- This was stepping outside the world of the game a bit more explicitly than I think I really had during the book game; I was admitting that my only line into the game world is through her narrative. She took it in stride -- she said "I will press stop so I can tell you about the movie" -- and she told me that the titles were playing over a song, which she proceeded to sing (with dancing of course): Dolphins, dolphins, why do they swim?
Dolphins, dolphins, why do they swim?
They swim and swim.
Like otters, and sea horses, and fishes.
... It went on for a little while; and my quoting is needless to say from memory and inexact. I reckon we were ready to push start again and watch another segment, but at this point it was time to go and visit her friend Alyssandra.
posted evening of Monday, March 29th, 2004
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