Small Talk at the Tea Party of the Surreal

Nana bought her plastic food.
For her birthday.
And she liked it.

Much of child's play, no matter how inventive, is rooted in realism, a heaping serving of practice-for-adulthood garnished with the silliness-of-childhood to make a sort of magical realism. Moms who use their kitchen to microwave popcorn buy their children play kitchens, filled with play food that the children play cook while their parents heat up a frozen pizza. Parents who shudder in boredom and horror at an invitation to a fancy restaurant snap pictures of their children's fancy tea parties, where people who normally drink water from a Smokey Mo's plastic cup sip Kool-Aid from delicate china cups.

The whimsical and the surreal mingle with the mundane: your daughter may play in her play kitchen, but produce a pickle and cheese sandwich with the lettuce on top. Teddy bears bedecked in more accessories than your average bingo hall crowd get Kool-Aid splashed on their paws by a five-year-old in a licensed Cinderella dress whose wand keeps getting caught in her plastic tiara.

I wasn't an entirely normal kid, but much of my play was firmly grounded in magical realism. Despite having a robust collection of Barbies and stuffed animals, I was determined to put our pet rabbits in the dollhouse, even though they refused to stay posed. I also went through a phase of pretending I was a dog and crawling around on the floor on my hands and knees. Green Milk Bones were the best, as I recall. I once followed the dogs around for a whole day, taking notes.

Eleanor, as my eldest child, took her play as seriously as she has taken everything else in life. There were rules, dear Lord, there were rules. There were the rules, the exceptions and exemptions and qualifications to the rules, and the rules to follow when the exceptions and exemptions were contradicted by the qualifications. When Eleanor invented a game, it was a sure bet that both siblings would wander off in boredom during the Reading of the Rules, before the game actually started, and, in fact, the Reading of the Rules generally lasted longer than the game itself. She once designed an Exercising School for her siblings with a seven-day revolving schedule and a signed contract. Then had a tantrum when they wouldn't sign it.

The proper attire for your big sister's tea party.
Just look at the enthusiasm!

Bruce, too, was grounded in realism, being the extremely concrete child that he is. As a preschooler, he decided to dress up as an owl. Paper feathers, boas, or just pretend were not good enough, not real enough. No, he got naked and taped real feathers all over his body. I'm a little surprised he didn't try jumping off the roof. Being easy going, he often allowed Eleanor to coerce convince him into playing her games.

Betty, however, has never been content with realism, even the magical kind. Her imaginary landscape is firmly in the land of the surreal. She had two friends (Ava and Lola) for six months before any of us realized they were imaginary. Despite having a bin full of Barbie clothes, her Barbies were always naked, generally with very short hair, and often missing a limb or two (likely as a result of accidents occurring when their clothes or hair were removed). To Bruce's horror, they were usually found in the bathtub. If he ever visits a therapist, the first childhood trauma he will relive is going to take a shower and being confronted with a tub full of naked, dismembered Barbies with bad hair, sort of like the climax of a really bad horror movie set in a sorority house. Just last weekend, she produced an abstract musical play ballet that, as best we can tell, involved faeries, of varying numbers, jumping, and some sort of sleeping sickness.

Abraham Lincoln, who may actually have
been 6'1" in that hat.

Which brings us to the ultimate Tea Party of the Surreal: the Third Grade Biographical Research Project, which was a Very Betty Event. Each student had to present their subject, in costume, and respond to questions from the audience--all in the first person. Betty had a beard and a suit and a stovepipe hat and was introduced to the class, not as Betty, but as The Sixteenth President of the United States. It was the ultimate dress-up. Her best friend, Albert Einstein, was quite fidgety, perhaps because s/he went first and had a burst of nervous energy to release. Bill Gates asked Helen Keller, without irony, how she died, and she confessed she didn't know. How-did-you-die, it turns out, is a popular question, along with its corollary, Are-you-still-alive, also asked completely without irony. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell did not remember how she died, but could tell you confidently and without irony that she did and that she was born in England. Bill Gates related his criminal record (speeding and driving without a license) and wanted to know if Helen Keller knew where her grave was. Thomas Edison really needed a drink of water but had to try to sit still while Albert Einstein explained that her/his favorite equation was E=mc2. Abraham Lincoln was able to correctly state that s/he had moved to Indiana as a youth (s/he had said India in rehearsals, putting an entirely new spin on history), and s/he was able to articulate with gusto the details of his/her assassination by Wicksbooth when questioned but wasn't sure how long it had taken him/her to die.

For an hour, the dead and the living mingled on blue plastic chairs, asking each other personal questions, while tugging on homemade costumes. Each delivered their three-minute, three-index card Spoon River soliloquy, while proud mammas and grandmas sat in the back row, iPhones up and recording. The only thing missing was a set of tiny china cups and a box of cookies.