Had a great afternoon with the spawnage after school, today -- we played a board game, did some puzzles and we even performed an intense 20 minute rock opera. Of course, I didn't record it... moron. They were just acting out this story and, occasionally, Mr. Z would yell out the style of music for me to play on the acoustic, and they would sing along. It was very "Tommy," though at one point it turned into sort of a Rush "Temples of Syrinx" thing. Hopefully, we'll be able to recreate it on tape, someday.
In the middle of one of the games, though, Mr. Z blurted out:
MR. Z: Dad, I really don't want to die!
ME: Aw, Mr. Z, we're having so much fun right now. Let's not get into all that right now...
MR. Z: But how do I even get OUT of it?!
Touche, boy. I talked him down, and we were able to continue with the merry-making, but he is definitely in a heavy death-assessment period right now. My dad said that when the kids were out visiting, last week, Mr. Z said, "So, Grampa, when I'm grown up and have my own kids, you probably won't be around to see them, huh?" The boy sure knows how to kill a party, doesn't he?
We'll keep talking him through it all and he'll wrap his head around it, eventually. Poor dude -- I was (am) the same way as a wee lad (non-wee adult). Maybe we can work it all out in song... perhaps in a rock opera in which Mr. Guanaco ponders being and nothingness while swinging through the jungles of Guanacoland?
Or maybe he'll just write another song about a dog building a toilet.
2 comments:
I went through that death phase after visiting the planetarium with my class when I was in the first grade. The planetarium show ended with the sun enveloping the earth and everything blowing up. While the rest of the kids on the bus ride home laughed and pretended to be their favorite star wars characters, I sat there thinking about death and the impossibility of true permanence.
This began what my parents referred to as my "sulky phase", which I've never really outgrown.
It also ruined planetariums for me. I've never been able to truly enjoy a laser Floyd shows as a result.
Well, Jon, it seems that we're cut from the same cloth... or, shroud, if you will.
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