Our house is overrun with origami frogs. Fifthborn has constructed a great, hopping knot* of them from sheets of pale yellow paper, following instructions from a book kindly given him by Sixthborn's best friend's mum when he was recovering from all that birthday weekend vomiting. Now there are origami frogs everywhere, sometimes arranged in complex military formations, sometimes gathered in a decadent heap on Fifthborn's bedside table, sometimes engaged in long-distance races down the hall which have to be suspended halfway through because it's time to go to school. When the latter occurs I am given a stern warning not to step on any of the origami frogs en route to the front room or to allow their positions to be disturbed by breeze from the front doorway when I go out.
These instructions need to be taken very seriously because Fifthborn remembers everything. To me, every pale yellow orgami frog looks much like all the others, but to Fifthborn each is a distinct individual about whom he has compiled a detailed dossier listing personality traits, individual strengths and weakness and performance data relating to a series of athletic and intellectual tasks. The demands on everyday life made by these origami frogs has, you'll have gathered, been substantial and, at times, exacting. I may yet retaliate by deliberately failing to return to Sixthborn's best friend's mum the very attractive Tupperware-style container she mistakenly left here recently. However, the emotion stirred in me most strongly by the invasion of the origami frogs has been melancholy nostalgia.
I never went in for origami as a child - martial arts have never been my thing, boom boom! - but I was every bit as keen on disappearing into deeply private fantasy worlds based, in my case, on Subbuteo leagues or Smarties tube top Olympics or tiddly-wink Grand Nationals, the outcomes of all these events meticulously documented on a tatty typewriter and stored in loose-leaf binders for posterity. Seeing Fifthborn so absorbed in similar types of activity affects me quite powerfully, though whether I am gratified more than I am perturbed is hard to say. Do I want him to turn out just like me? Not sure I'd recommend it, actually.
*(Yes, "knot" is a collective noun for frogs. And, by jove, there are others!)