My Bad Influence

The five year old, henceforth and forevermore known as Ollie, has taken-up a habit that thrills me to pieces and makes his father shake his head and consider revoking my rights as a mother.

He has decided to write books. I can even pinpoint when and where it all started. One weekend, while my husband abandoned me for the joy of sitting in a deer stand, yet not actually shooting a deer, I took the kids to a playland at a nearby mall. It served a two-fold purpose; they could run off steam and I could work on my NaNo novel. Ollie decided to check out what I was doing.

Things lay dormant until the next weekend he was over. He was coloring, a normal practice, and quite quiet about it until his brother decided to bother him.

Ollie requested, "Stop bothering me, I writing a story."

This was the first in an endless set of stories. He has a plethora of notebooks and an endless supply of paper. Every so often, he'll bring me pages that are ready for production (stapling.) Or he'll say, "This is a really long story I writing." He's not so good yet with the various forms of to be.

My husband is on one side thrilled. Yet he shakes his head and recognizes that this could become a uncontrollable beast that I will endeavor to feed.

And he's right.