Date: 2004-12-21
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

Ben looks at me squarely. 'Ok," he announces, with a small nod, like he has just decided something and there is no going back now. "It's Question Time." You can hear the capital Q and T in his voice."Ok," I say.He takes a breath. "You go first.""Ok," I say, "What's your favorite thing to do at school?""EVERYTHING!" he yells. "Ask me another!""What's your favorite food to have for dinner?""LENTIL SOUP!!!" he roars. "OK! My turn!"I grin. I like this kid. Whose favorite food is lentil soup? "Ok, ask!" I say.He takes another breath. "Are you going from Florida to Spain or Spain to Florida?"****Ben is four years old. I am babysitting him for the first time. His mother has told him a little bit about me, in order to allay any nervousness about meeting a stranger: has told him, in particular, that barring unforeseen catastrophes I'll be hiking the Appalachian Trail next spring. It's a conversation starter, anyway, though he doesn't really need it. After an hour with Ben I wish everyone made friends so easily. His question widens my grin. "I'm going from Georgia to Maine, " I tell him. "But Spain would be a pretty good stop, too.""And...when are you going?""Sometime in March," I tell him. "I don't know exactly when, yet.""And...how long is it?" "Guess!""Five!"Slight pause. "Five what?"Another pause. "Minutes?"I choke. "Nope! It's gonna take me five or six months to go the whole way.""Whoa," he breathes, like I have just told him I have X-ray vision, or am allowed to cross the street by myself. "Guess how many miles it is," I say."Six?""More.""Seven?""A _lot_ more.""Thirty?""A _whole_ lot more.""Thirty hundred hundred?"I pause. It takes me longer than it should to shift the decimals and count the zeros, translating Ben to English. Then I sigh, slightly defeated. "No, not that far," I admit. "About twenty two hundred.""Whoa!""You want me to draw you a picture?" I ask."Yeah!"Rapidly, I draw an extremely sketchy outline of the US. I mark off Florida, equally sketchily, and then Georgia and North Carolina. Then Maine. I look at the amount of space I've left myself for all the states in between and decide state outlines aren't really necessary for the present purposes. I draw a line, very roughly, from Georgia to Maine. "See?" I say, explaining as I draw. "Florida's down here, but the Trail starts in Georgia, and then...it goes...all the way up...to Maine!"He looks extremely dubious. The whole Trail, I am realizing, is, in my cramped picture, about three inches long. "It doesn't LOOK very long...." he says, and the expression on his face says very clearly, Lady, you have got to be kidding me, this thing is the size of a carrot stick.I think, briefly, about what it would involve to explain scale drawings to a four year old. I open my mouth. "Well," I say lamely. I shut it. "Wanna play Go Fish?" I ask. "NO!" he says. "I wanna play There's A Moose In Your House!"****We eat dinner down the street, at a taco place. He is having trouble sitting still at the table while also demonstrating just exactly how the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz dances.Minutes later, I am staring in wonder. This child is a pixie. This child is three feet high. This child mimes the entire Wizard of Oz. He has just eaten a burrito the size of a fat baby. It is quite literally longer than his head. He beams at me. "Can I have another one?" He eats the second one, too. This child is amazing. This child has the soul of a trucker, or a long-distance hiker.We walk back from dinner. He holds my hand and sings on the sidewalk at the top of his lungs, his breath frosting in the air:"BOYSGIRLSGIRLSBOYSBOYSGIRLSBOYSGIRLSGIRLSBOYSBOYSCan do anything that they want to do!GIRLSCan do anything that they want to do!Ride that train, ride that trainCome on, baby, gonna ride that train."You can almost hear the key change in the middle. "Wow, Ben," I say. "Did you make that song up, or was it one you already knew?""WELL," he says expansively. "I started out making it up but then it turned into another song." "Awesome," I say.****He asks for a bedtime story: The Magic Schoolbus in Outer Space. I settle down next to him on the bed to read, and he interrupts me quite seriously."Except you can't get under the covers, cause we have a rule at our house: no pants in the bed. Except if we weren't at home it would be okay, except not, because we don't want to confuse ourselves. Also you know what you have to say when you have to fart? To tell people?""What?""Smoke's a-comin'!""Got it," I tell him. We start reading, and suddenly his hand darts out from underneath the covers and touches my ear. I start laughing. "What are you doing?" I ask. He gets a slightly irritated look on his face, like I have just committed a minor breach of etiquette, something on par with asking how much he earns yearly or whether he's thinking about marrying or settling down yet. "I like to touch people's ears," he explains patiently.I consider this, and shrug. It doesn't hurt. "Okay," I say, and he nods, and holds onto my earlobe like a security blanket while we keep reading.Ms. Frizzle has just been set adrift in the asteroid field when a furtive look crosses Ben's face. "Uh-oh," he says, "I forgot.""What's wrong?" I ask.He covers his face with a pillow and calls out in a muffled voice. "Smoke's a-comin'!"The phone rings. It is his mother, calling to check in. I tell her everything's fine, and does she want to talk to Ben? I put him on the phone. "Yes," he says. "Yes. Except for you forgot to tell her about the ear thing." There is a pause. "Because I don't like to have to interrupt myself." Another pause. "Hold on. Let me ask her." He puts the phone down and looks at me quite seriously. "Did it bother you?"I smile. "No."Later, he falls asleep with my ear curled tightly in his hand. I disengage myself from his grip, turn out the light, and close the door, humming to myself:Ride that train, ride that train,Come on baby, gonna ride that train.