Isaac and Joy have a place where they are allowed to stick their stickers — a cupboard in their room. I don't know who gives them the sheets of stickers. Sometimes it is my mom, sometimes the maids. They have their own halves of the sticker wall; the left belongs to Isaac, and the right is for Joy. It is not a pretty sight, the sticker-infested cupboard doors.
A few mornings ago, Joy kept singing a silly song she made up, about Ben 10 marrying Barbie. This made Isaac upset and he kept saying, "No! Ben 10 cannot marry Barbie!"
This just egged Joy further. Making her 5-year-old older brother upset seemed to give her inspiration. The more Isaac objected, the more she would declare the union of Barbie and Ben 10.
To up the ante, she skipped over to the sticker wall and violated her brother's personal space by placing her giant Barbie sticker right next to his favourite giant Ben 10 sticker.
I think my 3-year-old crossed the line with this one. Isaac burst into tears at this travesty and reached out with his hand of righteous indignation, to try to peel the Barbie sticker off. I decided to intervene before this became an international incident.
"Isaac, first of all, stop crying. You are a big boy and shouldn't cry over something silly like this."
His crying became short sobs.
"And Joy," I said to the grinning rascal, "stop bugging your brother with your Barbie and put her back on your side of the door."
She did as I asked and then, curious, I turned to Isaac and asked, "Anyway, what's wrong with Barbie marrying Ben 10, Isaac? They look quite nice together what."
"No, cannot. Barbie is not a Ben 10. She has no powers."
So it was not because my son was against the institution of marriage per se. He was just against the union of human and superhuman.
That just opens a whole other can of worms about inter-... er, species discrimination but I decided that was a discussion for another day.
It is always important to respect a child's idea of what should be in his world and what is out of bounds. I totally understood his concerns.
I, for one, would never let Barbie marry one of my Clone Troopers. They are the elite soldiers of the Republic, after all, while she does not even have Jedi powers.