PLAY

Listening to the boys play often is very revealing of aspects of their personalities. After seeing the new Star Trek movie, terminologies and scenes have been incorporated into their fantasy space world, for so long dominated by Star Wars, although tempered somewhat by several seasons of Voyager that they watched with me. And of course there are a lot of funny comments, as they manuever their Lego-built starships into situations. I rememeber hearing, "Captain. Shield down to 60 %; shields down to 80%---shields down to 1080%!" What??? There was no explanation as to why they were increasing in power as they went down.

Joey likes to be in control, wants to be destroying, delights in action. "Bring out the ion cannons.!" I remember him responding to his brother saying "I'm going down," with "No. You can't." What? He often does not like it when Chimo tries to change the storyline. Chimo, for some reason, tends to like the backstory and also wants to rescue people (as in one scene where Joey was willing to leave the crew of a spacestation that was under attack, and Chimo kept saying, "But we can't leave them.") Joey was worried about attacking forces, while Chimo was saying "We don't have medical transporters!" Note, not transporters, medical transporters. Joey likes to take over ships Chimo has built and put men aboard and fly off for adventure; Chimo will spend a lot of time in the contruction of a space station (elaborately done, with ducting and all). Both boys have good imaginations though, which is nice.