If Connery is a drama king--and make no mistake, he is a drama king--I have only myself to blame. After all, I spent much of my childhood with the parentally mandated nickname of Sarah Heartburn (Heartburn? Bernhardt? Get it?) Now I think it's funny, at the time--much like when I call Connery a drama king now--it caused me to commence further dramatics.
Anyway, Connery does love him some drama. If there's none around, he will do his level best to manufacture some. This morning was classic. See, he has this little Mama Bear-Baby Bear combo stuffed animal that was a lovely present from some old friends when he was born. As with all his stuffed animals, he goes through stages of being really into certain ones, and right now it's these bears. They are attached to each other, and the baby bear plays...
Oh, hell. Here's a picture so I don't have to burn your retinas with stuffed animal descriptions:
So anyway, this morning on our way out the door to go to preschool, he says to me, "Mommy, maybe when I come home you can take the baby bear off the big bear."
When I told him that might not be a good idea because it would be easier to lose, he pondered that for a while and we went through various scenarios of where the bear could be lost, ending with the potential disappearance in a combine harvester, which I labeled as unlikely. In any case, he seemed to have accepted that keeping the two together was probably a good idea, and I felt victorious because it meant that I might not have to spend some future evening scouring Livingston for a 3-inch blue bear that plays "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."
He insisted on bringing it in to school, despite his initial desire to keep it up on a shelf, away from babies. ("They put everything in their mouths, you know," he sniffed in a kind of "filthy habit!" tone that would make you think he hadn't just yesterday been told to stop licking the picnic table.) At the last minute--probably in an effort to create some drama--he asked me to retrieve them from the baby-free shelf so that he could play with them.
So I'm talking with his teacher when I hear him burst into heartbroken tears. The Bears, they have been rent asunder:
Iris has detached little bear from big bear, and the world is at an end.
In other words, she has accomplished exactly what he had wanted to do no more than 15 minutes previously, but now it is a tragedy of epic proportions.
But you know what, even when I know he's probably being dramatic just for drama's sake, I couldn't help but scoop him into my arms to hug him and dry his tears with promises of a dramatic bear reunion, accomplished with a needle and thread. It will be done. Sarah Heartburn, to the rescue.