Family Values ($2.99 plus cost of paint.)

I paint gaming miniatures as a hobby, and it is one of my favorite things in the world.  I have begun sharing this hobby with my daughter who turns five in three weeks.  I helped her paint her first mini last year, a barded warhorse that she painted blue and yellow.

Lately she's been asking me to paint one just for her, a mini that she can have and play with as her own, and I told her I'd be delighted to, thinking it would be fun to sit and show her the process of painting.

Since she wants to play with it, metal or plastic minis would be too fragile, so I knew I would have to get one of Reaper's Bones line, which are made of a softer PVC material that holds paint well and is safe and durable.

So we went to our favorite gaming shop ever, which has walls of gaming minis available.  The good news was that they were having a 'buy three, get one free' sale on Reaper's minis.  The bad news was that they were having a 'buy three, get one free' sale on Reaper's minis.  That meant that there were only three Bones blisters left on the pegs.

Luckily, one of those was the exact mini I was hoping for, a unicorn named Silverhorn.  This was perfect (the other two options left were a giant spider and a three pack of zombies, and I don't like the sculpt on either, so unicorn it is.)  So I picked it up and showed it to her, and she was delighted.  Immediately we began to discuss how I should paint it for her (it they'd had two of them, I would have purchased both so that we could each paint one.)

We settled on white, with a silver horn (natch,) and rainbow tail and mane.  DON'T YOU DARE JUDGE ME!

But while we were discussing it, the following exchange occurred:

"I think he will look great once we paint him."

"Daddy?  You keep calling it a 'he,' but I know it's a girl."

"Well, actually sweetie, it's a male unicorn."

"How could you tell ?"

I showed her the mini.  "See that lump between the unicorn's back legs?" (check the link above if you think I'm making this up.  You can't see it all that well in the picture, but in the blister, it's pretty noticeable in a three quarters view.)

"Yeah?"

"That's the unicorn's penis.  Do females have penises?"

"No."

"Well there you go."

"But I want her to be a girl!  Can you make her a girl?"

I laughed, "I guess so, but that would involve using a knife."

"Okay."

"Oh...well... you know, once we paint him up, you could just pretend he's a girl.  No one would really know."

A millisecond of consideration.  "No, I think you need to cut him and make him a girl."

So there you have it.  My daughter is a conservative when it comes to her fantasy values.  She will not tolerate cross dressing in her rainbow unicorns.

Sorry, Silverhorn, majestic Lord of the Unicorns, you've got a date with a #5 X-Acto blade, to make you more in line with the whims of little girls.

Still, that's pretty cold.