Our bedtime routine for the older 2 boys consists of a few books, a few songs, and sometimes a story. I started the storytelling portion a couple of years ago as inspired by my uncle, who told epic tales about my siblings, me, and my cousins — and I do mean “epic” as I only found out later that he lifted a lot of his material from classics like the Odyssey or Iliad. The trick to storytelling is that they have to close their eyes to imagine the story, peppered with all the references that allude to their interests du jour. Before you know it, they’re sleeping soundly.

But as the boys have gotten older and a bit bossier with their requests for story content (“make the bad guy a giant!” “say that we’re traveling up a volcano this time!” “pretend that C has super strength and can defeat the monster in one punch!”), Dave has started to troll them a little bit during his nights putting them to bed.

Take, for instance, J’s fascination with dragons for the past few months. He requested stories about the brothers as dragons, and we obliged. But then he started requesting that his dragon self had multiple powers: fire and water. Or fire and water and ice. And eventually, without shame, he asked that Dave tell the story with J featured as an Everything Dragon. As in, everything power. As in, totally OP* and does not make for much of a contested battle scene at the story’s climax.

So Dave obliged and started telling stories about J as an Everything Dragon. But in the stories, the attack scenes were riddled with mentions of poppy seeds flying, or sesame seeds scattering around, or J getting soggy and crumbly from the rain. The big reveal finally happened: J was actually an Everything *Bagel* Dragon.

This happened subtly at first, but then in enough stories that eventually I could hear J explicitly request during story time: “Dad, can you tell me a story where I’m an everything dragon? But not the bagel kind.”

In the 90 – 120 minute saga that is bedtime in our house, I have to say, me loitering in the hall to eavesdrop on the hilarity of Dave trolling the boys with these types of things is probably not the material that would get us featured on Parents magazine, but it is definitely how I just spent my Friday night.

*overpowered/gamer-speak