"Xiao Gu's birthday?" ...
I knew about Xiao Gu. It (instead of he or she) is a soft doll-like toy, made of cloth outside and some spongy stuff inside. It is shaped in a mushroom, so it has been called Xiao Gu (小菇, Little Mushroom) by my grandson James. Every night when James went to sleep, he would hold it in his arm and then put it beside his pillow. It seemed to me that he could not sleep well without its company.
"But when? When is his birthday?" I asked James. In Mandarin.
You know, in Mandarin Chinese the possessive pronouns his, her, and its are all the same -- all pronounced as "ta de." But James didn't care about grammar. He just answered my questions directly and seriously.
"His birthday is on Thursday, that is, TODAY!"
"Oh! ...?" I almost stumbled over the words, wondering what to say to continue our conversation. But then I quickly learned that James had gotten a good idea: "We should offer a birthday party to Xiao Gu. We'll give him some birthday gifts and, of course, sing Happy Birthday to him!"
We did what my grandson had planned. And I, so-called "Xiao Gu's grandfather," created a special Happy Song for this good friend of James', a "mushroom-like panda" or "panda-like mushroom." Above all, we sang the song "小菇快樂歌" together this evening; and in a metaphorical sense, the pronoun "we" meant "James and I and Xiao Gu" -- as James imagined.
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