A Stranger Here Myself

Eyeballs Stay On Your Head

Posted on April 28th, 2006 by Karen.

Jeremiah sat down at his art table and drew with crayons for a while, then came in to show me what he'd made:

"These are a lot of different suns and planets," he says.

"What are their names?" I ask.

His eyes light up and he begins pointing at different items. "This one is called Planet That Sometimes Gets Hit By Suns. And this one is called New Saturn."

"What happened to the old Saturn?"

"Nobody knows," he states solemnly. "Even I don't know."

"Okay. What's the name of that planet?" I ask, pointing randomly to a circle on the page.

"It isn't a planet at all, it's a moon. But this planet," he points, "is called Always Be Careful. 'Cause there's volcanos on it. And the planet right here is a different Earth. It's the Dinosaurs' Earth. The dinosaurs never died there!"

My son has invented an alternate universe. My geeky little heart is proud.

"And guess what?" he says, warming to the subject. "There's different galaxies in space. And this is one of the new ones. When I colored them in, I thought they were old planets. But then I decided they were new ones. This one," he points to a circle, "is Newanus."

Iron willpower allows me to keep a straight face. "The replacement for Uranus?"

"Yes. It's also called Lewanus. And this one here is called Be Careful Of Lava."

"Wait, do all the planets have volcanoes?"

He pauses for a moment to consider the question, then revises his statement: "This one is called Be Careful Of Very Very Very Hot Water."

He takes the paper back to his room, turns it over, and makes a new picture:

He runs back into my room, holding up the picture, and begins to tell me about it. "This one," he says, pointing to the bright orange thing at the top, "is the sun. That sun is called Never Go On It."

We've had to explain to him many times that people can't live on the sun.

He drives home the point. "Our sun is called Please Stay Away. And this planet next to it is called Don't Come Here Or We Will Destroy You. It's full of bad guys." (He actually says "astroy", but he uses the word a lot in bad-guy context so I'm familiar with its meaning.)

"Interesting! Tell me about another planet."

"About a nice planet?"

"Sure."

"Okay! This one is called Please Come To The Planet."

"What about that one?" I ask, pointing at random.

"That one is called Cereal Bars Are Yummy. On that planet, the people there always eat cereal bars and Cheerios with milk!"

"Tell me about the planet in the corner that's all squished?"

"With the hole in it? That one is called Please Eat All The Chocolate Milk."

"Do people really need to be asked to eat chocolate milk?"

"No. But all the people on the planet tell other people, off the planet. They tell them through their telescopes, to come visit their planet and share their chocolate milk." He points to a small circle with a holepunch through it. "Did I tell you about this one?"

"Not yet…"

"That is just a little egg. It's falling through space."

"What's going to happen if it hits a planet?"

"It won't break. It's the kind of egg for making babies. It will hatch when it's ready to."

"What kind of baby will hatch from that space egg?"

"Guess what?" he exclaims, which is his trick to maintain narrative tension while stalling for time when he's thinking on his feet. "It's a kind of animal that can fly through space without a spaceship or even a spacesuit! He can even land on the sun!" Clearly the live-on-the-sun dream dies hard.

"And this planet," he says, moving on, "is called Eyeballs Stay On Your Head." He's cracking himself up now.

"Do the people on that planet need the reminder?"

"Yes."

"What would happen if the people forgot to keep their eyeballs on their heads?"

"Then the planet would remind them. The planet gives the people lots of gifts. Like food and seeds, eggs, babies, squirrels, bacon, popcorn, and… pretzels. And Japanese snacks. Those are all things they like."

He has an abrupt shift of interest. "I'm through talking about this galaxy. I'm going to draw some more galaxies now." He marches back to his room to sit at the art table, drawing more planets and humming the Star Wars theme. In a few minutes, he's back with a new picture, very similar to the previous two pictures, clamped onto a clipboard.

"You can write down the stories I tell you," he announces, which is nice since I'm already doing it. "Here's a story about this planet. Someone lives there who is named…" He hesitates, then concludes: "Nobody knows who lives there. Even I don't. Even you don't. Even daddy doesn't. Maybe… everyone on that planet has their own house and they don't have any parents. They're all kids. They play together. But they're sad because they don't have any parents. I wish they could come to Earth. Then we would play with them. Then all of them would be happy with their new parents. We would share ours."

At that point he wandered off and finished the conversation, but I don't want to end on such a twee note, so here, in case you haven't seen it yet, have some cop-on-gamer action. "I'm wearing boots of escaping!"

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