In the latest of Miles’s increasingly unwieldy bedtime stories, PJ Masks villain Night Ninja had shown up at our house (or a fictionalized version of it, anyway) because he had mistaken Miles for Catboy. Although Night Ninja realized his mistake after Miles removed his Catboy mask, Miles had already called for help in the form of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Paw Patrol, both of whom Storytime Miles knows very well and can summon for assistance at any time.
“Oh no!” Night Ninja said. “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?! They’re WAY better ninjas than me! Plus — they’re teenagers, and that’s bad news!”
“Night Ninja knew he was in trouble, so he tried to run away,” I narrated. “But then, the Paw Patrol…”
“No,” Miles said, interjecting (as he’s grown increasingly more comfortable doing when he’s unhappy with the direction the narrative is headed). “Then Leonardo take out his sword and cut off all the ninjas heads.”
“What?!” I said. “Are you saying Leonardo cut Night Ninja’s head off??”
“Yeah,” Miles said, with a placidness typically only seen in the most deranged of humans.
“Miles,” I said, “that’s just too violent! Leonardo isn’t cutting anyone’s head off.”
“But Night Ninja’s a bad guy…”
“That doesn’t mean he deserves to be decapitated!”
I didn’t expect a simple bedtime story to turn into a lecture on criminal justice…
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 