The Great Power of Power Buttons

This morning my son (4 years old) came downstairs with one of his arms covered with circular little stickers. When queried on this, he responded that they were buttons that made things happen. The gamit of actions over which these buttons have control is astounding. One turns him into a comet and he flies around, another pops his wings out and he flies around, a third deploys some kind of energy weapons (depicted by pointed fingers) and he flies around shooting things. When his mother asked him to clean up his breakfast dishes, he said "you have to push a button." So she pushed a button, he immediately hopped up and flew around the family room yelling out behind him "that was the wrong button!" After he came back, the second button turned out to be the right 'clean up your dishes' button.

You will have noticed a prevalent theme. This has been a continuous theme with the boy ever since he could talk. Years ago, we were all sitting around in our bean bags pretending that we were doing something else: Mom & Dad: "Our bean bag is a floating inner tube drifting down a lazy river." Daughter: "My bean bag is a big ice cream cone and I'm eating it." Son: "My bean bag is flying!" And thus it has ever been. Flying legos, flying tinker toys, flying marbulous, flying silverware and plates, if we got him Lincoln Logs, he would build a log cabin and then it would fly around the house, probably shooting things.