Recent Conversations with Raimi
One morning Raimi woke up saying “Daddy, where are the Hot Wheels Transformers?” He doesn’t own anything like that, so it was pretty clearly something that he’d dreamed about. I tried to explain that to him, but he kept saying “I don’t think it was a dream, Daddy. You gave me Hot Wheels Transformers. We have to look for them. They had flames on the sides. I don’t think it was a dream. Where are they?”
Later that night at bedtime, Raimi was brushing his teeth (which is Hot Wheels toothbrush), and he looked thoughtfully at his toothbrush for a minute and then said “Maybe it was a dream, Daddy,” then went back to brushing his teeth.
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Raimi has a variety of stuffed animals (lambs, cats, bears) that he keeps in his bed and calls his Snugglies. One morning I went to get him out of bed and he started telling me about how his Snugglies protect him.
“What do they protect you from?”
“From monsters.”
“There’s monsters? Where?”
“Outside. A monster called the Disappear Mover is outside.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. He follows you outside.”
“Really, what else?”
“The butterflies smell something, and they think it’s food, but it’s the Disappear Mover.”
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Sometimes when Raimi and I are driving in the car together we like to pretend that the car is a space ship or a submarine. One morning I was driving him to daycare and he didn’t want to pretend either of those things. “OK here’s an idea,” I said, “Let’s pretend that we’re driving the car just like normal, but I’m Raimi, and you’re Daddy.” At which point I dove into my Raimi impression which goes: “One more episode, I’m not even tired. Water makes me cough. I want junk food. That’s dusty.”
“OK, now you be Daddy,” I said. “What does Daddy say?” Raimi just stared out the window with a bored look on his face.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just all kinds of language.”