Park Slope Extortion
We have a mini stroller now, but one thing has still been an object of yearning for Lucia lately: a new ball. “Ball” is one of her very favorite words, used to refer not only to actual balls but to pictures of anything round—the Earth on Atlas’s back, polka dots, a full moon. And at the playground, she is fixated on balls—the basketballs being tossed by the teenagers on the basketball courts and, of course, the many different balls carried around by other children. “Ball, ball,” she always says, pointing. This afternoon at the Tot Lot, she made off with another child’s dinosaur-printed ball. Well, “made off” isn’t a very Lucia action; she saw it, picked it up, and clutched it to her chest for pretty much the rest of the time. She, too, had a ball with her—her spiny purple ball—but what she wanted more than that was a smooth ball printed with some sort of picture. And so this afternoon we went to a nearby toystore and I bought her a ball, which she held tightly the entire way home. The ...