When I dragged myself out of bed today, I found HRH and the boy in the living room working with Lego, as usual. There was a robot on the table.

“Hey, nice robot,” I said.

“Yeah!” the boy said, excited, and proceeded to show me all the features, including a tiny helmeted Lego man sitting inside the robot’s head in front of a viewscreen. I looked at HRH, who looked back at me.

“I had nothing to do with this,” he said. “It was, ‘Hey, Dada, I want to make a robot. With guns. And a driver.’ So I said okay, and we designed it together. Dear Diary: Today my son built his first battlemech.”

The boy started telling me a story about it, and I said, “Wait wait wait: You’re telling me that this robot hangs from the bottom of a plane, from a rack? And the driver climbs down to sit in it? And then it’s released from the rack and falls to the earth to do what it needs to do?”

“Yes!” the boy said.

HRH and I exchanged a glance again, one of those wide-eyed ‘no I don’t know where he came up with all of this’ looks that we can’t help but trade now and again. Because, really, he’s had no exposure to battlemechs yet, unless one of you has been secretly showing him mech-based anime or something. The hanging from a plane thing is more steampunk, another genre he hasn’t had exposure to (beyond thematic elements in Miyazaki films) though knowing him, I’m surprised the robot doesn’t hang from a dirigible.

We’re kind of proud.