Mr. Big Guy

A couple months ago Millie and I were on our way home from her daycare.  Driving home from daycare is always entertaining.  She's excited and chatty.  We talk about her day.  I ask her what she did..."played with my friends". I ask her what toys she played with..."my kitchen!" I inquire about what she ate for lunch..."green beans!"  We sing songs and talk about what we are going to do when we get home.  I love that time.  She is so darling.  On this particular day we were driving and she says out of nowhere, "There's Mr. Big Guy!  He's pretty funny. I wanna hold him! Hi Mr. Big Guy!"  I wasn't sure what she was talking about. I turned briefly to her and said, "Where's Mr. Big Guy?"  She replies, "He's right there!" and points to what I assumed was the seat in the car next to her.

It was at this point that I realized my child had an imaginary friend.  I find imaginary friends a bit creepy.  Creepy in the "holy crap my child is seeing a ghost" kind of way.  I talked to her a lot that evening about Mr. Big Guy.  I found out he was tall, purple and had purple hair.  My fears about Mr. Big Guy being a ghost disappeared.  He seemed harmless enough.  Over the next couple of months I would ask about him. I would ask her if he wanted to eat dinner with us.  She would respond, "Yes! But he's outside." Mr. Big Guy was always outside.  I found this rather cute.  She always expressed how much she wanted to play with him.  She didn't really talk to him so maybe I took this whole imaginary friend thing a little too far?

Lets jump ahead to last week.  I haven't heard Millie talk much about Mr. Big Guy lately.  We were at Harmon's, loading our groceries into the trunk when Millie shouts, "There's Mr. Big Guy!  He's right there!"  I am surprised because she hasn't talked about Mr. Big Guy much lately.  I turn to look where she is pointing.  I look across the street and see....

Yep.  My kid did not in fact have an imaginary friend.  She had just seen one of those - well - what do you call them exactly?  According to The Family Guy you call them this...

I died. I laughed for a good 15 minutes.  Millie was so thrilled to be seeing Mr. Big Guy again. And I had no idea.  Clearly she had seen a Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man by her daycare.  As an adult I don't pay any attention to these advertising shenanigans.  Of course a kid would be completely fascinated  by them! We loaded up our groceries and I drove across the street to T-Mobile to let Millie get a longer look at her friend.  She was thrilled, "Mr. Big Guy is pretty funny.  He's wiggling!"  Ah, good guy Mr. Big Guy.

I admit that there was something about this situation, while hilarious, that made me feel a bit sad.  My child was trying to tell me something and I just assumed that she wasn't being truthful.  Children her age don't lie much. I should have looked more carefully when she told me initially about Mr. Big Guy. I could have been driving her to various places in the city to see some version of Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man for months!

This weekend Millie asked Seth to show her Mr. Big Guy on our computer.  When I came back from my morning yoga class I found them like this...

Oh you know, just another Saturday morning in the Youkstetter household.  Watching Youtube videos of "skydancers" (that is what they are really called).  She was completely captivated.  I laughed and laughed and laughed. 

Later that afternoon I gave into Millie's request of "I wanna see Mr. Big Guy again!"  I spent 30 minutes of my afternoon watching these videos.  Turns out there are a lot of them.  Mostly promotional but they even have "Skydancers Gangnam style".  Seth came in and saw us watching more videos.  Millie was over the moon about the whole thing.  I got a fit of the giggles. I laughed so hard that Mills got mad at me and I had tears streaming down my face.  I just never thought in a million years that my Saturdays would be filled with watching "skydancer" videos with my 2-year-old.  

But man does she love Mr. Big Guy.