Saber-Toothed Tigers

Toby went to a birthday party today at the trampoline gym.  As such, the ride home was filled with a lively conversation about Saber Toothed Tigers.

Oh, sorry, was that a non-sequitor?  It didn’t make much sense to me either but it was entertaining nonetheless.

Here’s what I learned about Saber toothed tigers from 5 year old Toby

-Saber toothed tigers are good. They are called saber toothed tigers because they SAVE people by rescuing them if they need help.  SAVER-toothed was repeated over and over again to me until I got it.

-They are very fast.  Like, faster than Cheetahs.  They accomplish this by running and then doing a somersault over the backs of the cheetahs and landing in front of them.

-They eat bears, lions and tigers and anything covered in fur.  And grass, too.

-They live in the forest near caves so they can be near the bears that they eat.

-They are made of steel.

=They are not orange in colour, more like a very deep red.

-They have  long pointy teeth that are sharper than vampire teeth

-If there was ever to be a fight between a Saber toothed tiger and Captain Underpants guess who would win?  The saber toothed tiger.

-They have sharp claws and when they try to catch someone they only have to swing one claw of one hand without even moving their arm and that person would be knocked to the ground.

-NO one could ever hurt a saber toothed tiger because they are so fast they would just jump out of the way if someone came at them with an axe or something.

After this informative introduction to the Saber toothed tiger, Toby reached into his loot bag and picked out a mask that was obviously a hippopotamus face.  Toby put the mask on, roared at me and then announced that he was a Saber Toothed tiger and would I like him to be my pet?

I declined the kind offer graciously on the basis of safety concerns.

“Mommy!” I was immediately reprimanded, “Don’t SAY THAT!!!!

I have rehearsed several potential arguments in my head that having kids might force me to have: why smoking is bad, why a curfew is important, why you can’t get you’re ears pierced before you are 10. But I never thought much about having to defend my choice NOT to want a saber-toothed tiger as a pet.  So I had to do my best with little to no preparation on this one…

“Toby, you’ve just spent the last 20 minutes explaining to me how TERRIFYING and SCARY Saber toothed tigers are.  It’s not that I don’t LIKE them I just think they sound kind of dangerous.”

I was reminded of the fact that they are called SAVER-toothed tigers for a reason because they would SAVE me and that they also don’t eat hair so when they were saving me they would use their nostrils and NOT their large pointy teeth so I would be OK.

I reluctantly agreed and Toby went to put his mask back on

Just when we thought all was right in the world the elastic band on the mask broke and we arrived home, broken mask in hand, wailing in grief at the loss of the dollar store-hippopotamus -that-is-actually-a-saber-toothed-tiger-mask.

Phew.  Birthday parties ARE exhausting.