Roan at 7

Dear Roan,

On the night of your seventh birthday I read you a book you bought at your school book fair earlier that day called Drones. You were very interested in the book and asked a lot of questions, but a few short chapters in you said, "this seems like a great book for boys who like fighting. Like Ninja Turtles and superheroes. Seems like there are a lot of boys who like that stuff."

This is not a new observation. On Halloween you observed that Power Ranger costumes were very popular.

"Seems like everyone wants to be a blue or green Power Ranger," you said, practically rolling your eyes. And, "that stuff is so popular," only you pronounce the word popular as poplier, a mispronunciation that I love.

On the night of the Drone book I asked, "do you like that stuff?"

"It's really poplier with boys, but not so interesting to me."

"Okay, so what do you like?"

After a long pause you said, "I don't know yet. I like to build. But I don't know what kind of boy I am."

Fair enough Roan. After all, you just turned seven. You've got time to figure it out.

Though in some ways you already think you've got it sorted. You told me you want to be an electrical engineer and your schedule will be to work 4 days a week and have 3 days off. You'll work Monday through Thursday, and have Friday, Saturday, and Sundays off.

Tonight you wanted to tell the bedtime story. It was a Super Dogs adventure, which is an idea for a multi media franchise that you made up - there will be a TV show, a movie, a book, and toys based on the characters. There are three main characters, all dogs, named Woofler, Balacko, and Bark.

The story was really long. Lani was on the edge of the bed, rapt with attention, but I'll be honest, I was having trouble staying focused. Bark got lost on a snowy mountain side, because his sled had some sort of derailment, and there was a lot of attention paid to all the logistics of who got where via which method of transportation, and which vehicles required maintenance, and which maps were inaccurate. I'll just come out and say it: your story was full of pointless subplots. Finally the Super Dogs came to the climax of this story, which was finding a treasure buried deep in the snow. What was the treasure? Super long lasting batteries that would power their ATVs for at least a year.

Roan, this is your idea of treasure at 7-years-old.