The Circle of Defense

Our second child, the girl, was born September 2004. She immediately became a focus of her brother’s antics and games. She was still only a baby at the time of the Circle of Defense.


Feb. 2005

Wife Klem and I were reading the Sunday morning newspaper amidst a leisurely breakfasting. The baby had been placed on a blanket on the floor in the family room. At only a few months old she was immobile.

The boy was four years old at this time. Dinosaurs were his passion and fascination. He had amassed a large collection of plastic dinosaurs and they lived in a tub with lid. It was not uncommon for him to carry his tub of dinosaurs to a room of his choice and set up a diorama. “I’m gonna make a scene,” he’d explain. Sometimes it was a massive battle scene with meat eaters against the plant eaters. Sometimes, just to mix things up, it might be dinosaurs versus mammals versus reptiles and amphibians. It was his father’s pride to see the boy put his categorization skills to such industrious use.

On this particular morning he had incorporated his baby into the scene, “my baby” as he was apt to say. When Wife Klem and I checked up we saw that he had arranged his dinosaurs entirely around his baby sister. She had been circumnavigated. With the immobile infant in the center he had arranged for a Circle of Defense.


[Photo of defense perimeter while still under construction.] [Photo removed by Klem on 7/26/2010.]

There are times when we can all benefit from a Circle of Defense.
-klem