Nine-Year-Old Challenge

I’m blow-drying Little One’s hair last night when I decide it’s time for the nine-year-old challenge. She’s reading a book sitting in a chair while I’m trying to get her hair dry – still have to do her younger sister’s – before the timer on the stove goes off announcing that the noodles are ready for the cheese macs.

“You know,” I begin quite nonchalantly, “I was about your age when ‘the Event’ happened.”

Not much of a spark of interest. In fact, she turns the page of her latest book, volume nine of some fourth grade book series, and I’m not quite sure she heard me.

I clear my throat. “You do know what ‘the Event’ was, don’t you?”

“No.”

No eye contact.

“One day when I was your age, hundreds of thousand of flying saucers descended upon our planet, hovering a mile over all our cities, and took us over.”

Mild interest. Eye contact, at least.

“Yeah,” I say, matter-of-factly. “I thought I told you about this before. They came down from the skies and took us over … without firing a shot.”

Skepticism.

“You know how they did it?”

Disbelief. “How?”

Now I let the hammer fall. “They replaced every third person – that’s one in every three people – with an exact duplicate. Only it was an alien. And they loved to eat people. One out of every three people you saw on the street, or came across in everyday life, was a man-eating alien, watching us to keep us in line. And they could eat you at any moment, if they thought you were thinking up some funny business. What do you think of that?”

A shrug. Back to the book.

“Now, my dear, I know you are a writer, and if you want to be a serious writer, let me ask you a simple question.”

Now I have her attention.

“What do you do next?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t be so quick. Think about it. You’re the hero. What do you do next?”

I’m expecting things like –

Find a trusted friend somehow, find out how to detect an alien, find their weaknesses, escape to the mountains, something, anything, but instead I get –

“I dunno. Let me get back to you on that one.”

Okay! It’s a deal, future John Connor!