If you fail to address her adequately, she makes it a point to correct you and provides a dissertation on why you have to call her by her REAL name (all while in character). Not just personalities from stories she watches though, she does animals of her own creation too. Her latest is a dog named Fudge Lewis-Benson. First and last name. He's a typical dog, crawling on all fours, eating only with his mouth and he is unable to stand on his "hind legs" for very long or with any sort of balance. She commits to it, even when my patience is tested to limits unknown.
Last Thursday as I meandered around the ol' Kinder classroom helping kids with their work, Logan crawled around the free-time rug responding to questions and situations, as our favorite quadruped. The other classmates took it not unlike myself, sort of amused but a little confused (a slogan I need to put on a t-shirt for such occasions), so they began to insist that she's LOGAN, so they could get a realistic exchange from her.
Fudge grew increasingly aggravated that they wouldn't accept he was/is Fudge, not just pretending for the moment like they implied. She doesn't want to be placated, she wants full endorsement, as I know too well. She finally called everyone to attention and advised that she be referred to as FUDGE, and that it really upsets her to be called Logan. The teacher and students agreed to her demands, and Logan resumed crawling about, an air of triumphant justice about her. You have to admire the PR.
Imagination is one of the purest, most powerful abilities we have. Everything we want to do, be or have, in finest detail, ready to go wherever we take it. I'll be damned if I'll take it away from Fudge, even if it can be a crippling double-edged sword when "real" falls devastatingly short from the fantasy as an adult. As it stands, Logan is retreating to a place she feels is safe and effective when her own sensibilities might be trampled on. I'm sure we'd all enjoy that luxury if we could. I would SO decline to do any number of unjust tasks, simply because a rascally ferret named Bugonia Parsons-McMurdy was running the show.
You have to ask yourself what's important...that she be "normal" or that she feel she can handle things in her own way. I choose the latter. She's quite pleasant as a dog, quite mild-mannered, quite a mover and shaker in 1968, as Fudge tells it. Don't ask me where she got that year, but it has provided quite a few laughs. Maybe that's why she does it, to diffuse situations with laughter by way of performance art. I can think of a million other things that could be worse.
So I guess I'll be talking to animals for as long as she needs to need me to, as Logan's a sweet treat in her own right for concocting it all.
