The Princess

If you've ever met Sofi it doesn't take long for you to realize that one of her favorite things is to play princess. She usually asks any and every potential playmate "Do you want to play princess with me?" This is usually followed by the dispersal of roles and directions on how to play the parts. Sofi is, of course, the princess. Always. Everyone else is usually assigned the role of "Bad Guy". Even if you're female you will probably be assigned the role of "Bad Guy". Maybe, if you're lucky, she'll assign you the role of "the Queen", but usually this will be the "Evil Queen", or more often than not you may find yourself playing "the Mad Fairy Witch".

One weekend, a couple of weeks ago, I was playing with Sofi, and I was assigned the role of Bad Guy. Such an assignment isn't surprising, but what was surprising this weekend was the direction this particular play time was taking. Usually the Bad Guy captures the princess and locks her in a dungeon or a tower, from which she escapes, thanks either to magical spells, sheer strength or cunning. Whatever it might take, she doesn't spend much time being captured.

But this weekend she wasn't running away from the Bad Guy. Nope. This time, she announced, her and I (the Bad Guy), were going to get married. This was quite the change in story! After all, I hadn't been assigned the role of Prince, but the Bad Guy. So this change in plot took me by surprise, and left me wondering what I have to look forward to during high school if she is talking about marrying bad guys! But what took me by surprise even more was the next direction of the plot. Since we were getting married, that meant we had to kiss. "But", Sofi added, "before they can get married, she has to make sure there are no boogers on his lips." Decent criteria to have in a husband I thought, but of course this caused me to do a double take on my own lips. Thankfully, I was clear.

That one weekend aside, I usually find myself being the Bad Guy who is constantly capturing her and then chasing her when she inevitably escapes. The other day when I was asked, again, to play princess and being rather tired of being type cast I decided to mix things up a bit. I refused the role of Bad Guy and assigned it to her teddy bear, who quickly came to life as the Evil Teddy Bear. Thankfully Sofi accepted this replacement by my understudy, and the Princess and the Evil Teddy Bear were soon having at it.

But on Wednesday I discovered another way to escape this constant type-casting. I realized I just have to dress for the part! So I went downstairs, put on the outfit that Mary got for me to wear to her Madrigal Dinners... and finally was asked to play the role of the Prince. And was Sofi ever excited!