Outer Space

I love kids and the way they think.
Kent had a movie date with the boys a couple days before his trip. He decided they were old enough to watch Apollo 13 together. Of course the boys loved it! Somewhere in Joel's 4-year-old head a ball started rolling. He was thinking a lot about space travel and the fact that it is not a very 'safe' thing to do. He asked me millions of questions about exactly what 'after-burners' do and how precisely the 'heat shield' had been destroyed. In exasperation I told him that I just didn't know and he should ask his father as soon as he returns.

Then, as I'm unpacking hundreds of books, the boys discovered their Dad's Calvin & Hobbes books. Really fun, a bit unorthodox, but James has been reading them to Joel every spare moment for a few days now. James found a hilarious page where Calvin gets a cold and is sneezing himself into outer space.

You can probably see coming what took me days to piece together...

Joel with tears in his eyes: "Mom I feel like I have a cold!

Can't you make it stop?!"

"Calvin sneezed himself into outer space, Mom!"

"Honey, are you worried you will sneeze yourself into outer space?"

"Yeah, and Apollo 13 had part of it burn up!"

"No you will not sneeze that far, I promise."

Which preceded a long discussion of real v. pretend and a slightly reassured little 4-yr-old Joel. He seemed much more confident after taking an anti-histamine. Hm.

He must have inherited my propensity to worry about anything and everything to the Nth degree...