On Nathan's Odd Obsessions

Nathan has, of late, become obsessed with "dying on a cross." It began, of course with his ability to intuit that we wanted some sort of cogent answer when we asked him what his class studied in Sunday school on a particular morning. He realized that he need not really pay attention in Sunday school class, but that instead, we would be satisfied by his answer "Jesus dying on a cross." Of course since the crucifixion is an important part of Christianity (especially when coupled with the resurrection) we were, at least for a time, mollified by his answer. The game was up, of course, when we began to teach his Sunday school class.

Over the Christmas holidays we moved to Sylva, NC and we attended Jodie's grandmother's memorial service. Nathan wasn't in the service, but he was a part of all of the surrounding events. Our church is small enough that we have a little tradition on Sunday nights where the preacher asks for prayer requests and even the children are allowed to pipe up and let their needs be known. We've had to censor Nathan a bit, because his default prayer request is to ask us all to pray for "Granny dying on the cross."

We've gone out of our way to assure him that Granny died in the hospital and that there was no crucifixion involved, but I'm not sure he believes it.

At any rate, I came home the other day with a booklet that had a story that I'd written for AE. I asked her to illustrate it. I also promised Nathan that soon I would bring home a book for him about Nathan Island, his newest imaginary playground.

Apparently I wasn't quite fast enough. The other day he asked Jodie to transcribe a story for me from him. The full text follows:

"A Story By Nathan

Nathan found a big king. He needed a drink of water so he could Prince of Nathan Island. My dad had killed a holy severt [editor's note - perhaps he meant servant]. He broke his [I'm guessing the severt's] body and turned into bones. He had bumps of his face that was called "used bones." He put them in a museum. Then Nathan and his dad went to bed."

I'm thinking that I'll have to edit that a bit more before I send it to the mainstream press.

In one of his other stories he said "Let's pretend that I'm the prince of Nathan's Island, and my daddy died on the cross, so I get to kiss mommy on the lips." We're thinking of changing his name to Oedipus.

Last, and partially unrelated, Nathan story. He's been having a bit of a time with milk products. We first noticed it when he hadn't eaten anything recently but was walking around chewing on something. We asked, "What are you eating?" He calmly replied, "just vomit." Well.... isn't that special.