Maggie continues to be Maggie. Or maybe I should say, Maggie continues to be Stephanie. Or Ariel. Or Cinderella. Or any number of other imaginings. She's pretty much somebody else every day, depending on her mood. And almost always her character comes along with Number 5. This girl has quite the imagination. Sometimes she uses premises from books and movies and acts them out or expands on them. Like when she decides to go fishing on a sailboat and dip her toes in the water like happens in the Little Mermaid. But then she invites me to go along and all of a sudden we're on an adventure to Alliville and we better hurry before the boat leaves and Number 5 is coming with us but not on the boat, he's swimming next to us, and don't go in the hall because that's where all the sharks are, and I'm not Maggie, I'm Stephanie because it's almost Halloween, and All Aboard! This can go on for quite some time and she narrates the whole thing in this kind of urgent, breathless way like she's afraid if she doesn't talk about it now and fast that it will disappear and the magic will go away. And sometimes she comes up with just off the wall crazy things to say and I have no idea where she found the inspiration to put those words together. The other night she told me her privates are eighty years old. Umm, how did this thought ever make it into her head? The way her mind works . . . it's wondrous and mysterious and absolutely magnificent.
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