Ellie the mermaid

We went swimming yesterday and Ellie was wearing flippers and she looked just like a mermaid. So I swam up to her and I said, "Oh my gosh, is that a real mermaid? I've never seen a mermaid before--I didn't think they existed!" Ellie said, "Yes, I'm a mermaid and that's my house over there. You have to go to my house and hide because there are sharks here!" Then Greg was the shark and Ellie had to save me, the lowly human, from being attacked.

After swimming, Ellie and I went to the grocery store and she wanted to continue pretending she was a mermaid. Now she was a mermaid who was joining me on her first trip to my world. She was amazed by everything in the store. She had never seen a grocery cart before and she didn't understand where she was supposed to sit in it. When we went through the aisles, she saw food she'd never seen before. She was eager to tell me all about the food in her world, like noodle fries and seaweed burgers. She told me that some of the food we eat is the same as the food she eats, except they have different names. Butter is called "gamabi" and cheese sticks are called "weebelee."

When we left the store, Ellie the mermaid was eating a cheese stick and she dropped the wrapper on the ground. I stopped the cart and said, "Excuse me but in this world, littering is illegal." She said, "Don't you have garbage cans that come pick up your garbage for you? In my world, all we have to do is drop our garbage on the ground and the garbage cans drive around and pick everything up." I told her that no, we don't have that here and she will have to pick up her own garbage.

The game continued at home, where Ellie pulled out some food that was wrapped and yelled, "Hands! Hands! Come open this, Hands!" She asked us, "Don't you have hands that live in your house that come open things up for you?" I told her no, we have to use our own hands to open things up in this world. She was amazed at our backwardness.

She dropped the game soon after that, which was a good thing since I don't think I would have had the patience for getting her into bed if she had been expecting the pajamas to fly through the air and onto her body and the bed to come pick her up and lay her softly on a pillow.