I wasn't quite sure which heading to put this under... it's not L&C and it's not quite fan fiction, but it was too adorable NOT to share.

My son is 4 and this is the story he told me over breakfast this morning...

The Egg Monster vs. Superman

Superman got hit by a Monster Egg that ate the entire city turning it into Eggland. And all the people turning into Egg Monsters. The Egg Monster was from the Egg Moon and he was making a whole army of Egg Monsters.

The Egg that hit Superman was big, it was huge. Too big for Superman to pick up.

The Monster Egg from outer space was from Egg Planet. Superman was in the Egg Monster's tummy. He got eaten by the Egg Monster. The Egg Monster had arms, legs, claws, pants and shoes. Cut, scary shoes.

But this wasn’t the real Superman. This was a Robot Superman who wasn’t as strong. He couldn’t move mountains, only big piles of movies. The Robot Superman was bad and could do magic. He turned the real Superman into a flower.

The Egg Monster was strong like the real Superman and he could talk.

Electro was a bad guy. He had a flying horse – a robot one. It had buttons and guns all over it. And it had wings – helicopter things – and guns inside. The buttons made the guns come out of its body.

The real Superman got hit by a cereal storm. The Egg Monster threw him into space. And the real Superman couldn’t fly because there were meteors everywhere and he couldn’t move them back to where they were from.

Then he fell into a fireball storm…

To be continued (so he said… “I’ll tell you the rest when it’s night and dark outside.” So, we’ll see if there’s a part 2 )

That kid will go far.

LabRat

How cute!

Joan

Your son wins!
BJ

Too cute!

That is so cute! Thanks for sharing it!

Tara

Adorable! Quite a large cast and an epic amount of action involved! Strong A-plot... can't wait for part 2!

There is a web comic called Ax Cop. The artist is about 30 but the story is by his little brother who is 6. Steve Jackson Games recently put out a card game of it. They capture the 6 year old logic with cards like Hand Cuff Man. He has hand in his name so you can carry one extra hand full of stuff.

My co-worker recently had to bring her 4-year old daughter to work (day care emergency). She set up the kid in the lunch room with coloring books, crayons, DVD's, a sleeping bag for a nap, etc.

LUNCHTIME, IN THE OFFICE LUNCH ROOM:

ME: Hi there. (because I'm not going to miss my lunch, even if I have to eat it with a 4-year old.)

KID: Hi. (coloring a picture of a rabbit in her coloring book) I'm going to tell you a story.

ME: OK.

KID (colors some more, looks at her stuffed rabbit toy sitting on the table nearby): Once there was a bunny who didn't want to go to bunny school. (colors some more of the rabbit picture)

SILENCE

ME, AFTER A MINUTE: Then what happened?

KID: That's all. It was a short story.

Iolanthe: Fantastic! I love when 4 year olds speak their minds. They don't have all those hang-ups the rest of us have learned.

That's just too perfect! I mean, that's like... comedy gold right there, Iolanthe! That should be worked into a story, just as a side point or something...

I'll have to think about that. In the meantime, I renounce all rights - anyone who wants to can put that little tidbit in their story. Because I want to read a story with that in it, and it's likely that someone else will write it first.

That's wonderful Io!

Kids are awesome! I love how their minds think.

When I was in Disney a few years ago, I was waiting online to take pictures with Timon and Rafiki from The Lion King (because I am a gianormous 5 year old when it comes to Disney). Anywho, this little girl on line behind me (with an adorable British accent) had the following conversation with her dad.

KID: "Daddy, where's Pumbaa?" (since Timon and Pumbaa are pals)

DAD: "I don't know, sweetie."

KID: (after a beat, decisive) "Maybe Pumbaa went to get some tea."

Of course! What else would Pumbaa being doing if not taking photos with fans? I love how kids are so matter-of-fact about everything. It makes it all the funnier.

It really does! Kids are awesome!

My daughter works at Disney. That means her children grew up at Disney and know all the shortcuts to places. But the one thing that just confounded me was when we were standing in line to get my youngest granddaughter's picture with Goofy, and the 6'5" Goofy left and a few minutes later a 5'7" Goofy took his place. Not a word was said about the obvious. When I mentioned it later in front of her Mother, the little one said matter-of-factly, "But they told us Goofy needed to go to the bathroom. He didn't have to stand up as tall after he went."

Pat

My daughter at lunch today channeling Lois Lane...

HER: No! I mean it. It was a picture of a dog and it had a tongue this long. <<holds out hands about 2 feet apart>> For REAL!

ME: Maybe it was a picture of an anteater.

HER: No! For REAL, Mom. It was a dog! It didn't have a long nose or anything.

ME: You just HAVE to be right, don't you?

HER: YEAH! <<said in Duh! tone of voice.>>

Gotta love these stories!

Today at lunch I debated with two kindergarten boys on whether red sun Superman was stronger than yellow sun Superman. I, of course, was pro-yellow sun, they kept looking at me like I was an idiot and telling me that red sun Superman is stronger. When I explained that Superman only had powers here on Earth, but on Krypton which was under a red sun, he didn't... they changed their tune and decided that red sun Superman was like Batman, a hero with cool gadgets.

This conversation started with them asking me if Batman was real. I said he's as real as Superman. They told me that Superman wasn't real, but Batman was because he was just a regular guy with cool stuff. /

My daughter is 7. She was jealous that I was teaching her older brother some rudimentary html and css, so I showed her how to do it, too. I set up the basic html for the page and showed her how she could type in the file and show it in the browser. After experimenting for a bit, and asking for help with styling it to have purple script font on a red background, she proceeded to type a bunch of text into the paragraph tags. When I read it, I was surprised to find that she had started a My Little Pony fanfic.

At this point, she's more interested in continuing her story than in learning what the html tags mean.

Awwww. Like Mommy like daughter.

When I started writing again, after taking too long of a hiatus when my children were born, my children saw me and also got the writing bug. Mostly they have been picture books with rudimentary stories or captions. The closest to fanfic my kids have done is the above story my son told to me about Superman vs. The Egg (more oral story than anything else).

My daughter did one about our cat, who died of kidney failure shortly thereafter. After that, she returned to just coloring and has given up the writing bug.

In the past year, my son has gotten really interested in writing books. He illustrates and has me caption about one story every week or two. I have at least three of them sitting on my desk to save (I've been scanning them into the computer and sending them to the family.). Mostly they are monster stories told from the monster's POV. The humans ALWAYS (with one exception) get eaten. Most recently, the stories have started including a moral. ("Don't leave a mess after you eat" for example.) The one he brought me last night was about a monster created by a mad scientist, who then gets eaten by the monster he made. Sadly, the monster also ended up dying and becoming a ghost. Since I haven't yet captioned this one, I'm not sure exactly what caused the monster to die, but if I had to guess I'd say indigestion. He even draws a bar code on the last page of the book.

Mrs. M, I'm envious of your computer skills you're able to teach your children. I don't think I even have those basic skills. This will put them way ahead of their peers in that respect.

There are at least two versions of Clark being a Batman style character under a red sun. One where he and Jimmy Olsen are in the bottled city of Kandor and one where he and Lois are on a version of Krypton. In both cases he used Nightwing and Flamebird as identities. The story about that was what gave Dick Grayson the idea to use Nightwing.

Clark and Lois as Nightwing and Flamebird

You know, this could be an excellent plotbunny!

--Who is the monster? (I was just thinking of AntiKryptonite's excellent fic, Man Or Monster .) The answer is very debatable.

--- Who was the exception that didn't get eaten? And why?

---Is the getting eaten only physical, or could it be mental or spiritual too?

Virginia, your kid is taking after you in making statements that really make me think about background and backstory!

With the last one with the mad scientist, I'll have to agree. With the other ones, the victims usually were hapless people surfing, lying on the beach, or in their boat prior to becoming the monster's meal. (Hmmmm. Just realized most of his monsters come from the sea.)

I don't have that story right in front of me but if I can recall correctly it was a Godzilla type monster who attacked NYC and bit off the top of the Empire State Building, but then decided to befriend 3 boys on the street who were nice to him (because they liked monsters) and they went off together to have ice cream and lived happily ever after.

He's 6, so everything is literal. Very bloody, very gutsy, with the victims' bones/skeletons (and sometimes pants) being spit out at the end.

Thanks. He is a bit of a dark character. You should see him in his SM costume*, though, he can light up the room with his 1000 watt smile.


*BTW: SM Costume not supplied by me. He received it from a classmate on his last birthday. Henry Cavill will have stiff competition in 20 years.