Alien Zombie War World

This weekend, which was so excellent - in the 70s, breezy, shorts weather - that I could have just camped outside the whole two days and three nights long, I took the time on Saturday to play with my younger son (who turned five years old March 6, btw) at his level. My older son was playing, too, but if he'd had his druthers we'd have been playing some sport or contest. I think I've mentioned several times, my younger loves his imaginary worlds, usually pirates and Peter Pan. In the same breath, I've probably written that it's hard for me to just play in those imaginary worlds for hours at a time.

Anyway, Saturday it was Alien Zombie War World. My older son had arranged the way this world was working. Aliens had attacked our world and they had some mechanism to bring themselves back to life once dead, and after that, they could only be killed in one way - to take them to the Earth's core. Meanwhile, the aliens were wreaking havoc with their undead counterparts all over the world, and we were part of the last vestiges of the former world trying to save what was left. At first, my sons wanted to be robots, but when I joined in, I told them I wanted to be part of humanity. All of a sudden, my younger, "Agent 2" wanted to be a cyborg. "Agent 1," my older son just wanted to be in charge. That was cool with me.

I told him, okay, if you're in charge, then I want to be the toughest guy. Waaaaay-eeeeellllll, that started a fight. He wanted to be the toughest. I said, okay, then, I'm in charge. That was fine with him. Agent 2, meanwhile, got to be the special ops agent who was our "stealth" man. All that was great... until we started playing.

But before we did, I named myself, the leader, Bork. I called Agent 1: Hamilton and Agent 2 (the cyborg): Schaeff (short for Schaeffer). It was time for a mission. Before they went, however, we all armed ourselves with pirate swords, naturally, as pirate swords are the most effective weapon against alien zombies. Then, I sent Hamilton (who informed me that he was the only one who could take the alien zombies to the core) and Schaeff to the alien stronghold to steal their maindrive computer disk. They'd bring it back, we'd plant it with a virus, and then they'd go on Mission 2 to reinstall it and therefore corrupt the main computers of the aliens, thereby rendering them effectually without communication.

They started out on the mission, but I wanted them to report back. That little detail irked Hamilton, who wanted no part of me, Bork, being in charge. I had empowered him, and now he was the leader. Since I'm about as mature as my two kids, I argued, with an explanation that he was like the quarterback, and I was the coach. I still called the plays; he just ran them. He ended up stomping the ground and shouting, "BUT THIS ISN'T FOOTBALL!!!" For him, it was worth making it a knock-down drag-out that ended up with him pouting in the playhouse alone. So Schaeff ran the mission by himself. And guess what? Even without Hamilton, we completed the mission about thirty minutes later.

Eventually, Hamilton came back out and led the alien zombies to the Earth's core, but then he mutinied, and we all ended up fighting each other.

We did all this while I was watching my daughter, who crawled around outside on a sleeping bag and played with toys the whole time. Aside from arguing with my older boy over and over, it ended up being a really good time and special for my younger boy.

In fact, the next day, he wanted to play it all over again. Sunday after church when we went outside again, he excitedly asked, "Dad, can we play that game again with the aliens, and where your name is Dork?"