What would you be if you could be anything?

I never liked science fiction as a kid or teen.  I clearly remember reading To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer in either 9th or 10th grade and just thinking it was weird.  Of course, it did make an impact because I remember the premise of the novel to this day.

I think D has had a big impact on my increased interest in science fiction.  He is a true sci/fi nut and tends to read it exclusively (along with fantasy).  I read most of the Dune series after he and I watched the miniseries in 2000.  It is certainly not the primary genre I read, as evidenced by my Goodreads list, but the ones I have read, like Dune, stick with me--- Old Man's War by John Scalzi, Time Machine by H. G. Wells, Children of Men by P.D. James.

Some 15 years ago, a student recommended Ender's Game to me, and I loved the entire series.  I have gone on to read and like (as much as you can like) dystopian novels, which are closely aligned with sci/fi.

My latent interest in sci/fi is probably more expressed in terms of the films I love, like Inception and now Interstellar.  We watched this last weekend, and I'm still thinking about it.  Thinking about time and the various dimensions our brains cannot perceive.  Wondering whether in another dimension we can move time so that we don't think of it as chronological.  There cannot be a "this happened first" if time can move any which way.

I love thinking about all the questions that we cannot understand, about time, about space, about what our brains perceive that we don't recognize.

Last night I heard an interview with Jason Padgett who suffered a traumatic brain injury which left him able to see the geometry in everything (it also left him with debilitating OCD, which I also found interesting).  I have his book, Struck by Genius, on reserve at the local library and almost cannot contain my excitement to read it.  Listening to him talk was fascinating.

If I could be anything at all in the world, I would be an astrophysicist.  I rarely think of myself as having grand designs for any of my children, but I admit there is a secret part of me that hopes G (the most existential/mathy/geeky of the bunch at this juncture) will go along some kind of physicist route.

I have no natural talent in this regard.  I despised geometry in high school and flunked my final, but I wish I did have a better understanding of it.  D watched a TED talk recently about black holes, and though I was in the kitchen and attempting to cook dinner (therefore only half listening), I enjoyed what I did hear.  I like that fuzzy, kind of exhausted feeling in my brain that happens when I begin thinking about time and space.

Yesterday, as part of some professional development I did for the cottage school, I took a multiple intelligences test for myself.  I scored highest in Verbal (shocking!), Intrapersonal (also a bit shocking), and Naturalistic.  My lowest scores were Musical, Interpersonal and Visual.

My highest scores put me equally "balanced" in terms of analytic, interactive and introspective (for whatever that's worth).  It reaffirmed that I should probably be doing what I'm doing---being a writer and a Language Arts teacher.

But it also made me think of how cool it would be to be something completely different.  

Sci-fi & fantasy addict

D and I are creating a monster, I think. N got to a point awhile back when she wanted us to make up stories to tell her before bed. We exhausted our innate story-telling resources after about 2 nights. D told her the story of E.T., and she loved it. "Brilliant!," I thought. So I decided to tell her The Lord of the Rings...all 3 books, which required some re-reading on my part to keep everything cohesive.

At about the same time, D started telling her the Star Wars trilogy. My MIL has saved some of D's Star Wars toys, which N plays with when we visit on Sundays, so she was familiar with the main characters. For some reason, though, N has been harping on D to tell her more, more, more. She simply can't get enough of the story.

Tonight, she was absolutely pooped at bedtime. Today was the first time she has ever walked around the zoo without having the double-stroller to fall back on....so she was beat. D started reading her a Star Wars book my MIL gave her for Easter; he barely got 3 pages into it when she zonked out. She still (yes, still) uses a pacifier and was sucking away, making this squeaky sound that signals she is well on her way to dreamland. D turned off the light while she was squeaking. As soon as the light went out, she pulled the pacifier out of her mouth, said, "Star Wars," put it back in her mouth and fell right back to sleep. Her eyes never opened.

D mentioned to me the other day that he has wondered whether he is ruining the movies for her when she gets older. I don't think so...because she is envisioning the stories in one way, a 4-year-old way, and she will be much older when she sees them. I think (and hope) the movies will be magical for her because she already feels connected to the stories and has her own ideas of how characters and planets look. For the longest time, she kept insisting that Merry and Pippin in TLOTR were girls, and she referred to them as Mary and Jill. I finally had to explain that their real names are Meriadoc and Peregrin.

I have tried to find a Lord of the Rings book for young children, but I don't think there is one around. We have The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe picture book, and she really enjoys that. It is hard for me to describe the way certain characters look to her, like Gollum. There is a book we've read called, The Terrible Baby, and I told her Gollum looks kinda like the baby in that book. I didn't even try to describe the orcs because they scare the hell outta me. I think I said they looked like trolls.

As a child and high schooler, I did NOT like sci-fi or fantasy. In high school, I suffered through some Arthur C. Clark books (and I mean suffered). Being married to a sci-fi dork necessitated that I, if nothing else, learn to tolerate sci-fi stuff. Plus, there was a kid I taught my 1st year in middle school who introduced me to Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, which I absolutely love (and have read the entire series now).

A true love has now developed. I count His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman as one of my all-time favorites. I figure N will decide in her own time whether she really does enjoy sci-fi and fantasy, but it is ultra cool to have a 4-year-old who can explain how Chewbaca put C3PO back together again on Cloud City and how Frodo and Gollum fought before the ring fell into the volcano.