I boop my kids’ noses.
Especially the older two, who are 10 and 14. That’s old for boop, I know that. I book their noses and I brag and say “I’m the boop champion.” I sing it actually. The song goes “I’m the boop champ-ee-unn, the booping’s just begun, the booping’s never done, I boop you just for fun, because” and then it starts over. I boop them on each mention of the word boop. They fight me on it, and they always win, booping me, and then I sing sadly “I am the booped champion...” The point of the game in part is just a goof but it’s also about setting them up to beat me. They like that and I think it’s good for them. Sometimes they sneak up on me or trick me so they can boop me, they can be devious like that.My oldest did judo for a few years. She stopped when the pandemic started. She remembers some of it still despite the long absence and has a skill at play fighting and at explosive moments as a result. Sometimes this means the boop game leaves me a bit knocked around. Tonight she jammed her finger in my eye socket kinda hard. She missed my eye, which is good, got the lower lid at the edge of the socket where is shades into the cheek bone. It hurt, still feels a bit sore. She was apologetic about it and I was nice about it. It hurt, I don’t love it, but it was clearly an accident and I do like that she plays a bit rough and is strong. I want her to know she’s strong.
The three of us play a free war game online at night when my wife’s putting the five year old to bed - five isn’t thrilled at the idea of me doing bed time. Once in a while but she’s not thrilled, like I said, so my wife does it (her idea, not mine!). This game’s fun, right now we’re all at war with Austria, it’s going badly but we like to commiserate with each other. It’s a midwestern thing maybe, like complaining about the weather, which has, by the way, taken a turn toward properly cold - high thirties. We set the furnace to go on tonight if it gets down to sixty. I’m dreading the furnace, the dryness of the air and the cracked skin that results, ugh. Stupid placed to live! But at least I can get back to griping about the weather with my neighbors, that’s the common cause that binds us.
