Yesterday Merry lined up a half dozen or so rocks on the patio for school.
"If they don't listen," Merry said, referring to the classroom of rocks, "I give them a pinch." (She demonstrated with a clothespin).
Then she led the congregated rocks in a chorus. One rock apparently did not behave himself because Merry said, "Oh, you don't want to sing the song?" And promptly pinched him with the clothespin.
"That's rather brutal," my mother observed.
I've also noticed that Elephant comes under threats for a spanking fairly regularly. Martin and I take a staunch position of antiviolence in all forms, including spanking and pinching with clothespins. Merry, on the other hand, is free-handed in her threats of retribution--poor rocks--and not above threatening to thrash Elephant if she thinks the wrongdoing is grievous enough.
Maybe this falls in the same category as hoarding secret love for Barbies, since they are one of the only things we disallow. At visits to Barnes and Noble, Merry promptly pulls down half a shelf of Barbie books, plants herself in a chair and slowly devours each one. One time she actually tricked her aunt into reading her one interminable Barbie book after the next. She cajoled her weary aunt with filthy lies about her parents encouraging such a past-time.
It must be a phase. In the meanwhile I'm encouraged by the fact that Elephant is stuffed with fluff and the rocks are impervious to pinching.
