I’ve just come home from the hardware store where I witnessed a wonderful little scene. A very young mom was shopping for nightlights with her son, who appeared to be about three…maybe four. While she was looking, he came up to her holding a small package of rope and said, “Mom, can we get this?”

She looked at him and then the rope and she said, “What do you want it for?”

There was a really long pause while he thought about it and she waited patiently.

“To build hideaways,” he finally said. “Outside. Tie it to some branches and then hang blankets over it.” There was another pause, and then he added, “And cut out a half-circle for the door.”

At this point, I was fake browsing so I could hear what happened next. I mean, honestly, I had expected her to say, “No, put it back.” when he first asked for it, but she’d let him go this far and now I wanted to see what she said. There was another long pause and then she said, “Let’s see how much it is.”

I have to say two things struck me at that moment. The first is this is why I write for kids. If I can help them keep that great sense of imagination going, then my job is done. And the other was that even if they didn’t buy the rope…I mean, it’s winter, it’s going to rain for the next five days, and they probably had rope at home…she’d already earned Stellar Mom Points just for listening to him.

I left before the verdict came because I wanted to happily imagine them outside tying that rope to some branches and hanging an old blanket from it…with a cut out half-circle for the door.

I’m thinking of building a blanket fort of my own, actually. And for those of you grown-ups who think you’re too old, here’s a funny comic strip I found while searching for the above image.