The People Of Liddleville Don't Know They're Robots, Mari!

 

They think, they act, they live! And they need our help!

I was getting out of the shower this morning and this line from Marvel Comics' Micronauts #41 (cover date May 1982) ran across my mind. It's a follow up to a Fantastic Four story where the Thing, the Human Torch, the then-Invisible Girl, and Mister Fantastic found their minds transferred into tiny robotic bodies in a scheme of FF foes Doctor Doom and Puppet Master. And like all wicked people, Doom and Puppet Master soon turn on each other; then comes along the Micronauts (at the time, Marvel had the right to tell stories of them, but the characters themselves were and are owned by a Japanese toy company, so no Micronauts anthologies are forthcoming due to trademark issues) who find Doctor Doom and Puppet Master stuck in their tiny robotic bodies and the former taking advantage of it, and Liddleville (read "little ville"). And the Micronauts go into hero mode to stop him. Again.

I don't THINK any of my family members are robotic -- though it would explain some oiling I've had to do to Martha lately, tee hee hee -- and certainly none of that showed at Sarah's weekend birthday slumber party this Friday night and Saturday morning (she turned nine), where two of Sarah's friends, Addy and Ellie, her cousin Josceline, and her brother Jeffrey got to have a great time upstairs and outdoors in our backyard! I came home Friday night and to be silly I at first pretended not to even see the kids chewing down Pizza Hut pizza and drinking Shasta drinks there. Then there was Ellie -- you learn quickly that Ellie will not be ignored, she waved me down then as well as Monday when I went to school to have lunch with Sarah -- and it seemed after I got home that the party started! Now don't get me wrong, I am not a kid (though on the way to school Monday Sarah asked me why I was "being so funny" at her party, and I replied that when you're an adult you don't get to be "fun").

I miss discovery. Let's see, the reading I've finished these last few days includes Image Comics' series Lazarus (ISBN 9781607068099 and ... 68016, it's two volumes) where the main character is a family member and enforcer who ALSO doesn't know she's a robot in post-apocalypse America, Redwall: The Graphic Novel (ISBN 9780399244810) adapting the first story in the Brian Jacques series about anthropomorphic forest animals, Kean Soo's Jellaby (ISBN 9781423103035) about a little girl named Portia who follows up a classmate's report on Horton Hatches The Egg with a Tom Stoppard play analysis (love that!) who befriends a small dragon and while hiding him before Halloween sees him recognize a door in Toronto, and they head for it, and also an adaptation of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio (ISBN 0766631702; hint: the Disney version makes Pinocchio more naïve than uncaring). When you think you know something, you have to look at it a different way.

Which is why I value the Bible studies held after Breakfast with the Boys on Saturday so much. Even though I can't get to them as much due to my Marketplace work schedule, the fellowship time with sixteen or so of our other churchmen -- all either slightly or especially older than me, and some locked in the world before the 1960s! I need perspectives, different perspectives, perspectives I may not always agree with, but in the sight of God that we agree to agree on the fundamentals of our faith. Took Sarah and the family to her birthday lunch at McDonald's (which is really a treat now since we don't go there as much!) and birthday dinner at Perkins, where the shift manager there Brandon was especially endearing when Jeffrey ripped a fingernail and we had no clipper handy -- he tried to get us one and even offered in a joking manner worthy of me to slam his hand in the door so he'd forget all about the pain in his finger! (Don't worry. He didn't.)

Sunday morning at church between services -- though I did get asked to read the lessons when no one had yet signed up as I got there; I can pretty much be put to work at worship if I show up! -- I taught the lesson about Jesus' walk to Emmaus (see Luke 24) after He rose from the dead and appeared to two disciples, Cleopas and an unnamed other. (In my NaNoWriMo novel last year, I made the other "Amal" who in the operetta Amahl and the Night Visitors would have met Jesus as a toddler. See how that worked when it comes out!) The third grade class of ten started out unusually, but thankfully, quiet. Had one discipline issue who had to be sent upstairs, but after class was over -- and they DID learn something -- I caught the last twenty minutes of Pastor Gerald's presentation regarding the mission trip he'd been with to El Salvador building a house with Habitat for Humanity and Thrivent. You sure get a change in perspective when you see something like that.

We know what we can do, so let's do it!

David