in a galaxy far far away

It's Saturday. Having decided we're tired of City boys, A and I head east for the evening, towards Cheyenne. We take a right near Heber and follow the road arriving in Oakley just before sundown. After a lesson on geology and quartzite from a six year-old, I'm sitting on the floor playing Scrabble. M, (age 6) is spelling words like "armpit," and "library," and O (age 4) is laying tiles down to make the word, "eek." For the most part, M is following the rules: using letters from other words to spell new words, and asking me about double word score squares, etc. O has started his own game in his own corner of the board, his own Scrabble Universe. He spends a lot of time in his own little world, conjuring up all sorts of things, like this:

Donning an orange t-shirt with the words "Little Terror" in big turquoise letters written across his chest, his chubby cute-as-can-be fingers place down, Y, I, and T. "Yit." he says, like M and I know what page to find it on in Merriam-Webster. M gives me an eye roll, as if to sceptically say, Amateur. But we'll let it slide. I acknowledge him by copy-catting his eye roll and telepathically transporting the thought: Yes, but just this once. O has occupied himself by making sure all the letters stay squarely in their place on the grid. I turn towards him. "And what, exactly, is 'Yit?'" I ask. "It's a new planet. I just made it up. It's in the Tenth Galaxy," nodding very matter-of-factly. My shoulders shrug in the direction of M, who, on planet Earth, in the only galaxy I know anything about, is sitting on the floor of his house on a Saturday evening enjoying a game of Scrabble. He returns the gesture, draws a tile and the game continues.

Now, it's my turn. I spell something equally as brilliant as "armpit." Next up, O. To the planet (proper noun, but, we're letting it slide, just this once) YIT, he adds a D, an R, and an E, making it DRYITE. He looks at me for approval. "It's actually the planet DRYITE. See?" He points at the letters. I nod, (un)knowingly (there's a tenth galaxy?), but oh so amused at his imagination. "Aaaand..." he goes on, "the Dryitians (said like Martians) only eat things that are dry. Get it? Dry? Dryitians?" his hands open, palms up in a "well-duh" motion. Thoroughly amused I say, "Ohhh! I get it. I get it." In an almost-whisper, as if he was revealing the secret to a long and happy life on planet Dryite, in a galaxy far far away, he says, "And...(eyes growing bigger and bigger)...They never eat liquid." M and I laugh out loud. "But what if they want to go swimming?" (I thought I had him.) "They just...just...blend in!" He says, eyes the size of flying saucers. Realizing the sentence "They just blend in" could, in four year-old, be translated to, "Do I have to tell you everything?!" I give him another "Ohhh!" and then winked at M.

Dinner followed Scrabble. Big M starts a Spelling Bee with the boys, something very routine at their Oakley dinner table. I ask O to pass the katsup. "They don't have katsup on Dryite, you know." (I didn't.) This leads to a discussion about the blood of the Dryitians. Something about solids and liquids, but I didn't quite follow. He lost me at YIT.

And just like that, I've decided to ditch City boys altogether and spend all my time in the Country, eating hot dogs, having spelling bees and learning about distant galaxies from a four year-old.