Queens

Image by Laura Favrow, and used under a Creative Commons license

I’ve written before about the interesting conversations Lucas, now age 5 1/2, and I have had in the car on the way to preschool.

I enjoy seeing how his neurons are firing on any given day, and since he can’t see my reaction to what he’s saying, he tends to prattle on.

Background

First, you should know that Fang has been absolutely maniacal about exposing Lucas to a variety of music. The boy regularly hears (mostly American) music recorded anytime from the 1940s through this year. His favorite song at the moment?

This one:

(I opted not to embed the “official” video because the imagery may be a bit disturbing to some folks. If you’re all about vaginas, skeletons, and decapitation, however, by all means click through.)

Meanwhile, Fang is also showing Lucas lots of music videos. The video for Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” appears to have really made an impression on Lucas. This image in particular resonates with Lucas as being emblematic of bad guys:

Conversation

We were listening to “Born This Way” on the way to preschool yesterday. I asked Lucas if he knew what the song was about; he said he didn’t know. So I explained it, touching on many of the themes of our previous conversation.

Lucas especially likes the line, “Don’t be a drag—just be a queen.” It’s repeated three times in a row, and it’s one of the only portions of the song he remembers. So he kind of fixates on it.

I ask him if he wants to be a queen, and he says yes, he would, and that he wants his (male) friends Dallas and Marcus* to be queens, too.** He told them they should pretend to be queens so that they would have the autonomy (my word, not his, I assure you) to leave school whenever they wanted.

“Why do you want to leave school?” I asked. “Isn’t it fun?”

“It’s fun,” Lucas said. “But we want to go home and turn our TVs into Ultrons.”

Alas, Dallas and Marcus didn’t want to be queens. So they tried to become Bobs instead. (Bob* is the preschool’s director, and if you knew him, you’d find this hilarious.) However, apparently that subterfuge also didn’t work, so they’re still hatching new plans. (I told Lucas to try the queen thing again. He’s drawn to glittery pink craft supplies and brightly colored feather boas, so he could probably pull off that look.)

Once we arrived at school, I chatted with Lucy*, my favorite teacher’s aide in his classroom. Lucy said Lucas had started walking slowly up to the other kids and saying, rather mysteriously, “capital H-I-M.”***

He also started enthusing about marching hammers and Nazis. And all the other kids were all excited, and began asking more and more insistently, “What are Nazis? What are Nazis?”

I think Lucas might have just slipped a bit on Lucy’s most-favored children list.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking Fang and I need to have some conversations about appropriate pop culture for five year olds.****

* Names have been changed.
** For so very many reasons, I would be delighted if Dallas indeed became a queen.
*** The phrase is from the beginning of “Born This Way.” And no, Lucas has no idea what it spells.
**** Fang assures me he’s never watched the Lady Gaga video, which means Lucas hasn’t either. Would give the boy nightmares, probably.