the making, and breaking, of planets

The children of my colleague were in the office the other day, waiting for him to get done with a meeting because they were going to Dubai. The boy is 4 and his sister is 7. My colleague is always, always running late. So when I saw the kids in the lobby of our office, looking bored, I asked them if they wanted to make a planet with me.

Of course they did. What kid wouldn't want to make a planet? We went into the kitchen and took the glass plate and that little rotating ring thingy out of the microwave (the tea boy looked on, fear in his eyes). Then we got some binder clips out of the supply closet (no one uses paper clips here, weird, they didn't use them in Greece, either). Finally we took some paper out of the trash next to the printer, and headed to the conference room.

We spent a few minutes making space debris by wrinkling up the paper into balls. Boy seemed to really enjoy that. Then we put the space debris on the microwave plate so we would have our solar belt. An argument ensued between Boy and Girl, because they both wanted to be the sun, but then I convinced Girl that being the space debris manager was a much harder job, so she finally agreed to do that. While I was selling Girl on the management position, Boy was practicing making sun noises. He did a good job of sounding like the sun.

We got our solar belt rotating, and then Boy, playing the sun, started having sun flashes and knocking the space debris out of its orderly orbit and into other space debris. Girl did her best to keep up, but she's very methodical, and it was taking over a minute for her to combine to bits of space debris together with the binder clips because she wanted it to look nice. Meanwhile the sun was going crazy with sun flashes, and spinning the microwave plate way too fast. I explained to Girl that no planet is perfect in shape, and that they are more interesting for being not perfect in shape, and we were able to continue on at a faster pace.

Finally, all the space debris had been joined up. Girl was holding this mash up of wadded paper and binder clips. Boy was interested in seeing it, but luckily did not try to grab it away from her. His hands were busy still spinning the microwave plate.

"Behold," I said, "the planet you created!"

Now, most people might be excited for at least 5 minutes after creating a planet. But, kids have a shorter attention span than that. So, after naming the planet ("Dog" because they both want a pet dog), I realized they were getting bored and that perhaps the microwave plate was going to get broken.

So I asked them if their planet was going to be dense or light. They wanted dense. Then I created another planet, out of one piece of space debris, and said mine was a light planet, and then I was going to show them how these planets could orbit, except that they took this as an opportunity to chase me. So we started running around the conference room with our planets, and I started to worry because there are a lot of power strips laying on the floor, and most of them give off sparks because they aren't fully plugged in to the wall sockets, and I didn't want anyone to get an electric shock or trip, so I thought it might be time for a location change.

My planet, coming to the end of a conference room rotation, near the door, said "this galaxy is too scary, I'm going to another galaxy somewhere else where planets aren't trying to crash into me". Then I ran out of the conference room, but not before slowing down the killer planet Dog by closing the door after I exited. I dashed across the lobby, ran into my office, and hid under the desk.

By this point I could hear the planet Dog, more clever than I, slowly walking across the lobby so as to not get yelled at for running in the office. I could hear them whispering in the hall, trying to figure out where I was, so my planet said "I like this galaxy a lot better, because no planet is trying to get me". Boy and Girl ran into my room and I jumped out from under the desk, brandishing my planet. They both shrieked, and then Boy slapped my planet out of my hand. It landed on the floor and was flattened by Boy's sandal. Girl participated in the destruction too, grinding the little paper wad ridges down with her fabulous low heeled sparkly pink shoes.

"This is a cosmic catastrophe!" I said. I picked my planet up and pretended it was crying.

Girl told my planet that it could be part of planet Dog if it would just stop crying. So my planet stopped crying and we tried to fasten it on to planet Dog. But it was crushed so badly the fastening wasn't working. We finally folded my planet up and put it inside their planet (this can actually happen in real life).

Meanwhile, my colleague had walked into the office. He was giving me that look like what in the hell are you doing besides teaching my kids to run around the office? They showed him their planet. I think he was expecting something a little more, I don't know, stylish. He wanted them to throw it away but they wouldn't. He growled at me "I don't want that thing in the car" because he's a super neat freak (worse than me, even). I said I would keep the planet in my galaxy until they came back to the office and that it might get lonely not being with other planets. Girl said "But we can make more planets at home". My colleague looked even more unhappy.

Anyway, last I saw of planet Dog, it was leaving my galaxy and heading off to another galaxy far, far away. I got a text from my colleague last night. Boy is still making noises, pretending to be the sun, and Girl keeps saying "this is a cosmic catastrophe" every time the littlest thing goes wrong.