I spent Wednesday morning this week repairing a craft "telephone" my daughter had made at a camp recently. It was important to her that the two styrofoam cups that she had decorated be correctly held together with the string and paperclips. I repaired it, tried to show her how to use it (she didn't really care), and went on about my business. She was happy, and because she was happy, I was happy.
I didn't get home until bedtime that night. I'm not sure what had occurred during the day, but by the time I was back on the scene, the "telephone" was lying in my son's room. I helped get the kids ready for bed and then divvied up with my wife and took my son to his room. As I was trying to coax him into the chair to read a book, he kept running around the room more and more excitedly. Finally, he ran right across the telephone and in slow motion, the single string wrapped around his legs, drawing them together and causing him to tumble and stop his imperial domination of bed-time. While he's really built more like the AT-STs used by the Empire during their defeat against the Ewoks on Endor (his head is large and his two legs small), he looked just like an AT-AT on the frozen land of Hoth brought down by a Snow Speeder cable wrapped around his legs.
I hope I would have felt differently if he had hurt himself, but I immediately felt like a promising Jedi Knight who had used his force parenting skills subconsciously throughout the day in order to create balance in the force at bedtime. Now if only I could have turned off the night light with my mind. Well, there's always tomorrow night.
