13.1   The Rocketship

North Toronto to Venus (direct)—September 30, 1972

When I grow up I will have so much money that someone will help me do the dishes so I can watch Bugs Bunny whenever I want to and not even have the TV in the basement because I won’t have one when I’m very rich.  My house will have a swimming pool in it for the inside and one for the outside for when it’s sunny so when I want to have my friends over to play we can go swimming and pretend like we’re Aquaman.  I can already swim without using my hands because I can just flip back and forth like a dolphin with no arms or anything and I can still be in the water without drowning.  When I grow up I won’t have a brother or sister anymore because I will give them a lot of money so I can have my house all by myself and they can have their own babysitters and I will have mine.  And my babysitter will be the nicest in the whole wide world and we’ll stay up every night and watch the colour television upstairs in the den and have Jiffy Pop.  Every room will have a light in it and chocolate bars on the tables instead of cigarettes because it’s my house and I think cigarettes make me cough because I’m having asthma sometimes.  My favourite chocolate bar is Bar Six because I can take it apart with my teeth and eat all the chocolate first, then the bread part then the soft chocolate part but my sister says it’s coffee flavour but it’s really sorta of chocolate.  Cynthia just thinks she’s so smart but when I’m older I’ll be way smarter than her and I’ll live far away and never talk to her because she’s a poo-head and cut the hair off my Barbie and said it would grow back but I look every day and it doesn’t.  She still looks like a boy.  When I’m older I’m going to have the most longest hair in the world so if I have to climb out of a window I can use my hair to get away like a rope.  That way when my brother squishes me I can tie him up with some of my hair and use some for the rope too.  My hair will keep growing even if my Barbie’s hair doesn’t because she’s a doll and their hair is very slow I think.

I know a secret that even nobody doesn’t know because I never told anybody ever.  I’m from another planet and someday I’m going to be saved and I’ll be a princess and have shiny dresses like mum wears to dinner.  I won’t have shiny shoes like mum because the dog follows her shoes and tries to bite her feet but only when she has her dress-up shoes on that are gold.  I’m going to have gold dresses too and I can fly whenever I want to because the planets won’t have any gravity and no one can see up my dress because I’ll have shiny tights on so you can’t see my underwear.

I think if I am here for a very long time the planets can see me and they’ll come to get me home so I can be warm and maybe have a hot chocolate before bedtime.  I think maybe God can send a message to them and tell them I’m here waiting for them.  When I meet the planets I’m going to ask them what my real name is because here I have my name but it’s not my other-planet name.  Maybe I can pick my own name too if they forgot who I am because I’m here now and they changed my name so I can be like world people.  This planet is called The World but I think my planet is really called Venus because my sister says I’m Libra and people in September are from Venus which is very hot because it’s by the sun which is the hottest place in The Whole World.  The Whole World is everything but the World is just here where I am but soon I’ll be going home.  When I grow up I will be on my own World but it has another name.  I just don’t know what it is.  That’s all.