Spaced-out with a 5-year-old

Little kids seem to go through phases. I don’t know much about phases little girls go through, since I don’t have a girl, but I’m pretty sure one of the girl phases involves unicorns.

Little boys, on the other hand, I know. Although I don’t remember much about my childhood, I’m pretty sure I was a little boy once upon a time. 

What were my obsessions in the 1970s, ’80s, and perhaps the beginning of the ’90s? Taking things apart, for starters. One of my earliest memories is of taking apart dandelion flower heads in my backyard. I tried to take apart my dad’s easy chair, too, slicing into the pleather handrest to see what was inside. He did not appreciate that much, as I recall.

I had a severe obsession with LEGO blocks which persisted beyond puberty. My brothers’ habit of destroying my cities when I wasn’t looking didn’t deter me either. It just gave me more to work on, ensuring many more hours would be spent fiddling with my make-believe world. 

Sometime before that, I was obsessed with dinosaurs. Doesn’t every little boy go through this phase? There’s a photo of my son from 2018, and he’s at Dinosaur Park in Rapid City. He is wearing dinosaur pants, shirt, and underwear and is holding two plastic dinosaurs, one of which is in the act of falling (it’s on display at my office, where you can see my feeble attempt to mend it). Oh, and he’s also sitting on a dinosaur. Okay, maybe some of that is his dad’s continued obsession with dinosaurs, but he certainly doesn’t protest. 

He loves his dinosaurs. I don’t know how many little kids can properly pronounce the name Stenonychosaurus, but he can. He has seen the two Jurassic World movies (the last one in the theater). Again, this may be due to his father’s obsession with dinosaurs (and the stellar acting of Chris Pratt). Normally, I would say these movies are not appropriate for a 5-year-old, but sometimes we make exceptions for cinematic greatness.

The saddest part of the last Jurassic World movie, is, arguably, when the Brachiosaurus mournfully wails as it is enveloped in smoke and ash as the island is overtaken by the volcano’s eruption. The scene makes dinosaurs feel real, as all things seem to a child’s mind. How my son conjures up such rich worlds of make-believe, I’ll never know. If he could create his own world for a day, it would probably look a lot like a Dr. Seuss book. But with a lot more candy.   

In my own make-believe world, dinosaurs coexisted with space exploration. I had a book with all the planets, which I pored over.  I was an expert on the different planets and dreamed of visiting each of them. And I still get really cranky when people talk about now having only eight planets in the solar system! In my day, we had nine planets! 

Today, Pluto is just a large mass of ice, apparently. It’s still my beloved ninth planet all the way out there, doing its own thing, wondering what it would be like to feel the warmth of the sun. I still equate it with the Disney character of the same name, as well.

Visiting Disney World in the mid-1980s — Epcot Center, especially — was a revelation. It was like visiting the world of tomorrow — today. Not only that, but we visited other countries at Epcot Center! It was a small world, after all. The rides weren’t important to me. I wanted to live in the brave, new world of Disney World. 

So, one night while looking out the window with my son, we spotted what we decided was the planet Venus (through rigorous, in-depth research called Google), which kickstarted a discussion on the planets and stars which hasn’t really ended. 

I bought glow-in-the-dark stars for his bedroom. He already has a star projector, but now he likes the glow-in-the-dark kind because he can take them off the walls and sleep with them, I think. And now there is a string of planets — glow-in-the-dark, as well — suspended above his bed. And, yes, my friend Pluto is at the very frigid end. 

There’s something heavenly in thinking about celestial bodies. And I’m not talking about Elizabeth Turner (the model, not the canoeist). They’re so big, yet look so small. They’re so colorful, but with our naked eyes, we can’t see their rich colors. They’re so beautiful in photographs, but we see only their dim light in our night window. 

These childhood obsessions stoke the fires of our imaginations — imaginations that are never as brilliant as they are in childhood — and change us somehow. I don’t know what my son’s world is going to look like, but I hope he retains that beautiful wonder and innocence that burns so brightly when his imagination conjures other, glorious worlds. My time to dream those rich dreams and conjure those infinite worlds is gone, but I feel lucky watching him do just that.