Last week my son received a recruiting letter from Harvard. This took me by surprise. I had no idea that Ivy League schools were enrolling alien lifeforms now.
He seemed normal enough when we brought him home from the hospital seventeen years ago; cuddly and pink and only occasionally smelly. Sometime between then and now he’s been possessed by aliens. Or maybe they took away my real child and replaced him with one of their own.
Kind of makes you wonder what kids must be like on their planet. I mean, who’d travel thousands of light years just to get rid of a teenager? (Answer: Anyone who has ever had a teenager.)
I think they made the switch some time between his fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays. He started sleeping later and later and later. My wife and I were seriously concerned that if he didn’t get up he might actually merge with the sheets and become one with the bed.
“Go get him up,” my wife suggests.
“Not me. You get him up.”
There are two reasons for my reluctance. One; after the alien transformation he’s been … ummmm …. disinclined to wake up. Sort of the same way a grizzly bear isn’t eager to wake from hibernation. Anyone who dares to disturb him in his lair treated to a deep-throated growl and a bleary-eyed glare that could melt steel. Sometimes he even curls back his lip to show his fangs. I expect you’d get much the same reaction from the bear.
The other, bigger source of my unease is the prospect of actually going into his room. Something in his alien psychology compels him to litter his floor with anything that comes to hand; clothes, dirty dishes, socks, school books, papers, socks, magazines, video games, socks, CDs, DVDs, loose change, socks, and some things that I’d rather not try to identify. If our house is ever buried in lava unexpectedly, some future archaeologist will have a field day excavating my son’s floor.
One wonders, the report will read, how many feet these people had.
Usually I don’t actually go into his room. I just stand at the door and call to him across the sea of debris. “Time to get up! Rise and shine!”
He glares and growls and lumbers to the door, neatly avoiding all of the stuff he’s dropped. He accomplishes this even with his eyes closed.
Like a newborn kitten, he keeps his eyes closed for quite a while…usually until he sits down to breakfast. Which brings us to another of his alien traits. Eating. If our grocery bills are accurate, he’s consuming his own body weight in cereal, toast, and microwave popcorn every day. He eats other things, too. The cereal, toast, and microwave popcorn just keep him going between meals. And the most annoying part is that he doesn’t gain any weight from eating like that. If I ate as much as he did, I’d have to apply to the U.N. for recognition as an independent nation.
When he isn’t eating, he receives signals from the mother ship in the form of strange music from performers with names like Green Day, Avril Lavigne, Matchbox 20, The Killers, Blink 182, and Bowling for Soup. As far as I can tell all of this music is about whiny, nasally singers complaining about their lives. When I was a teen, we had great acts like White Snake, Asia, Duran Duran, Wang Chung, Cyndi Lauper, Men at Work, Men Without Hats and Culture Club. Their music was about wearing spandex, headbands, big hair and dancing like someone suffering a neuromuscular disorder. Things were a lot better back then.
I don’t want to give the impression that the alien thing is entirely bad. It has boosted his brain power and given him the ability to remember all kinds of odd, trivial facts. For example, he completely understands the Louisiana Purchase, the Mexican Cessation, and the Ostend Manifesto. (He tells me that if you knew American history you’d find that last sentence screamingly funny.)
He (and all of his alien brethren) are masters of trivia. They created the Wikipedia which is an on-line encyclopedia entirely written by its users. It’s the only place in the world where you can find a forty-five page article about Spongebob Squarepants, but only six paragraphs on the First Boer War.
This love of trivia spills over into his recreation as well. Like many of his generation, my son plays Dungeons and Dragons. This is a game which is so complex that the rules are published in multiple volumes. The game is played with reams of paper on which the players record various stats about their characters. It combines the complexity of double-entry bookkeeping with the fun of double-entry bookkeeping. The most successful players are those who have memorized more of the rules than anyone else. I guess this might be good preparation if he decides to become a lawyer, but I can’t imagine why else he’d want to do it.
He also has amazing stamina. He can stay up late into the night playing these games. The next morning he’s up at his usual time. He’s not exactly chipper (he never is), but he’s awake, alert, and generally functional. On the other hand, I start to tire out by early afternoon and frequently take short naps between the salad and entree at dinner.
I don’t really know why the aliens sent him. My guess is that he and his kind will take over the world when they get older. Or maybe it’s just easier for the aliens to have us raise their kids. Whatever the reason, I’m just glad that my younger son is still normal. Of course, I have noticed that he’s starting to sleep in a little more. I wonder what it will be like to have two aliens in the house.
