Soapbox

Burning the Midnight Oil

April 2, 1992

So I’ve got this kid… and like most kids his age (4 1/2) he’s crazy about dinosaurs. One night I went in to check on him and heard him mutter, "..parasaurolophis..." in his sleep.

He spends so much time in his fantasy worlds, that the people in his family all have designated characters to play in those worlds. In his dinosaur world, he is Ultrasaurus, and won’t answer to any other name. I am Diplodicus, Ted is Supersaurus and his sister is "li’l Anky " (ankylosaurus). Grandma, aunts and uncles all have dino alter-egos, and he’ll go cheerfully off to bed if you tell him, "Ultrasaurus, get up to your cave now. "
But when that starts to wear thin for him (which is LONG after it has worn thin for the rest of us!) he switches to creatures from the nighttime garden on his computer game. Then he is little Cricket, I am Firefly, Katie is Moth and Dad is Mole (Dad tried to talk Cricket into letting him be Falcon instead of Mole, but Cricket would have none of it!) Well, it makes the time pass.

He is fascinated by any information that seems in any way scientific. Perhaps too fascinated? A few weeks ago, he came into my room at about 4:00 in the morning.
When I hear little feet shuffling into my room in the dark, I expect to find a mess to clean up somewhere, or at least a fever. This was a more difficult problem.

" Mom, I have a question to ask you, and it’s very important. Mom, please listen and stop putting the pillow on your head. Now what is the relationship between the arctic tundra and the burning sands of the Sahara desert?"
Burning sands of the wha? He’s four years old for God’s sake! He shouldn’t even be able to say these words, should he? I know that at 4 AM I can’t say which way is up. I tried to shoo him back to bed, but he was insistent, with that tremor in his voice that says he’s trying very hard not to cry.

"Mom, I have to know! They didn’t tell the answer on the show, so I need you to tell me." Yeah, that’s your job mom: to come up with the answers. But that’s much easier when you understand the question…
Then I remembered that on PBS that night here had been a teaser for the next episode of a show called, "The Living Planet" which, I seemed to recall, asked that very question about the relationship between tundra and desert, and promised next week’s show would provide the answer. Stephen couldn’t wait that long, and neither could I, apparently, if I wanted to get any more sleep.
Ok, think fast, Mom.

"Psst Ted! (poke, poke) Tundra and deserts: what’s the relationship?" Ted mumbled something into his pillow that seemed to contain the word "water". Sounded plausible to me, so I decided to run with it.
I, the font of all wisdom, sat up and said,
"Neither a desert or the arctic has very much water, son. "
I guess it was the right answer. He smiled, relieved to have a mother that could explain yet another important mystery of life for him.

"Oh, yes, I see! Because it doesn’t really snow much in the arctic regions. OK. Well thanks, Mom! Goodnight. "
Goodnight, indeed! God help me if I turn out not to have been right: I’ll never hear the end of it.

Maybe we should buy him a set of encyclopedias and when the next 4 AM mystery comes along, make him look things up himself. Listen Lord, I know I have tried to instill a love of knowledge in the kid, but have I gone too far?