My son loves librarians. We spend several hours with our local librarians every week. For him, librarians are the readers of dinosaur stories, the players of silly songs, and the providers of craft projects, and they help him find and check out the books he loves. Librarians play a central role in his three-and-a-half-year-old world.
My son also loves pirates. One of his favorite episodes of the Curious George PBS show involves Hundley, George’s dachshund friend, who has an extended dream in which the man with the yellow hat plays a pirate who (very politely) takes over Captain Hundley’s ship. Although my son has only the vaguest idea what baseball is and no idea at all what Pittsburgh is, he has a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap, which he loves just because it’s his “pirate’s hat.” (Or, as he pronounced it until very recently, his “pie-rips hat.”)
But sometimes he gets confused.
I was brushing my teeth the other day when he stormed into the bathroom and announced:
“I’m a librarian, and I’m taking over your ship!”
Imperfect Happiness 