Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly stressed, or worried, or guilty, or any emotion that arises from my being stuck inside of my own head for far too long, I like to go to Clydeland. And then I always feel better.
Clydeland, of course, is the place where my eight-year-old son, Clyde, reigns supreme. It is a land free of nuances, or subtlety, or double meanings. In Clydeland, what you see is what you get.
This is the complete opposite to how I normally live my life. In my normal life, I think about stuff. A lot. Yeah, I’m the person who stands in the pencil aisle at Staples for twenty minutes debating whether to buy the “good” pencils or the cheap ones. (In my defense, it’s a complicated formula. First I have to figure out the price difference per pencil, and then how long I am likely to actually own each pencil. So while I’m standing there with my eyes crossed, I’m really doing math. “Let’s see, if cost=x and days of possession=y, then allowing for Clementine’s ability to lose anything in the first five minutes of ownership, and Clyde’s ability to break anything in the first ten, hmm, okay, let’s see, carry the six, divide by two—damn, I wish I had a pencil.”)
So no, I don’t underthink anything. Which is why it’s sometimes nice to hang out with someone like my son, Clyde.
With Clyde, it’s all on the surface. True, he’s only eight, but something tells me that he’ll never be one of those people who will one day say, “Yeah, I know you said x, but I could tell that you really meant y.”
Case in point: the other day Clyde and I went to see “Where the Wild Things Are.” Now there was a movie that had lots of stuff happening on many different levels. It had to, otherwise they would never have been able to take a two-hundred word book and turn it into a ninety minute movie. (Yes, I know all about “Saturday Night Live” skits being turned into films. They just prove my point.) And, because the movie had so much stuff going on in it (which, for me, was heaven) I couldn’t resist trying to discuss it with Clyde on the drive home—in particular, I tried to talk to him about the parts that had been a little bit scary.
“You know,” I said. “The Wild Things weren’t real. They were just metaphors for all of the different parts of Max’s own personality.”
Clyde thought about this for a moment and then asked, “But what about the boat?” (He was referring to the boat that Max sails “through three days and nights to get to the island where the Wild Things are.”)
“Well,” I said. “The boat was a metaphor for how we sometimes have to leave ourselves to find ourselves again, and . . .”
He stopped me right there, a disappointed look on his face. “So he doesn’t get to keep the boat?”
“There was no boat. It was a metaphor.”
Silence again. Then a small, hopeful voice. “Okay. Does he get to keep the metaphor?”
I sighed. Obviously, to Clyde, a metaphor was now a type of boat, like a catamaran. Or maybe a dory.
So I said, “Yes. He gets to keep the metaphor.”
“Good. It was a nice boat.” Clyde smiled, and once again, all was well in Clydeland.
“Yes,” I agreed. “It was a nice boat.” And a lovely metaphor. But more than that, it was also nice to just be able to hang out for a little while longer in the land of Clyde.