1, Life Hacks for a Little Alien

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I T GOES LIKE THIS. You won’t be normal. Aliens can’t be normal. You’ll be normal enough, though. And by this, I mean you’ll have just enough normal to seem normal without actually being normal.

Let me explain. Like normal human children, you’ll disregard every grammatical irregularity that comes your way. You’ll say things like ‘I goed to school with my mum’, ‘I eated the orange’, and ‘Colouring in is funner than skipping’.

If I were a prescriptivist, I would lambast you for these flagrant over-regularisations. i But as it happens, I am not a prescriptivist, I am a descriptivist. ii And as a descriptivist, I applaud you. ‘Goed’ is more logical than ‘went’. ‘Eated’ is more logical than ‘ate’. ‘Funner’ is more logical than ‘more fun’ and it’s a funner expression to boot. These assertions would chime with the internal grammars of many small humans. You’re blending in. Well done.

But you’re still wrong. ‘Goed’ and ‘eated’ and ‘funner’ aren’t words. You won’t find them in reputable dictionaries or even disreputable dictionaries. They’re wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong all the time and you can’t help it.

Let me explain. On your first day of school, you look cute in your tiny stripy tie. You go into the classroom, looking cute, holding your dad’s hand – something that’s also cute. When he lets go of your hand, you cling on to his elbow. When he shakes his elbow free, you wrap your entire body around his legs. When he wriggles you off him, he disappears out the door and you panic.

You are panicked. You don’t know what to do. There are other children. The other children are busy. The other children are doing seemingly random activities. You wonder if you should join in with the seemingly random activities, but you don’t know which activity to choose. Do you Play-Doh or colour in? Do you sandpit or clay? Do you Jenga or glockenspiel?

All these questions – or the absence of any answers to these questions – make your throat feel weird and your eyes well up. You’re upset. This is what happens when you’re upset. You don’t know that yet, though. Your little body is still a mystery to you.

The teacher comes over, but only at a leisurely speed. For a human, she is not in very good condition. She is old and creaks when she walks. Slowly, she eases herself down to your level until her head is at your height. She asks if you’re OK.

‘Are you OK?’ she asks.

You don’t know if you’re OK because you don’t know what ‘OK’ means in this context. You don’t currently have any unmet physiological needs. You don’t need to eat or sleep or drink or pee. Does that mean you’re OK?

‘Do you want to play with Henry?’ the teacher asks.

You wipe your nose on your sleeve. ‘Henry’ is just another word you do not understand.

‘Let’s go find Henry.’

The teacher prods you gently in the direction of outside. When you get outside, she prods you in the direction of the sandpit. When you get to the edge of the sandpit, she prods you until you step into the sandpit.

‘Here’s Henry,’ the teacher says.

In the sandpit, there are three boys. One has red hair, one has brown hair, and one is blond. One of these boys must be Henry, but the teacher doesn’t tell you which one. The three boys stare at you. You wonder if you have a Cheerio stuck on your forehead. You ate Cheerios that morning and it wouldn’t be the first time one of them got stuck on your forehead, it would be the second. You rub your forehead. There is no Cheerio.

The teacher tells you she’s going to leave you with Henry now.

‘I’m going to leave you with Henry now,’ the teacher says. ‘Don’t throw anything. If sand gets into anyone’s eye, they’ll have to go to hospital. Cheerio.’

When the teacher is gone, you stand with your arms at your sides while you sway, wondering if ‘Henry’ is the collective noun for a group of feral children.

At some point, the boy with red hair speaks.

‘Why is she just standing there?’ he asks.

Ten minutes later, you are covered in sand, standing in the creaky teacher’s office. Your teacher is looking at you through her glasses. The glasses have a magnifying quality. They make her look like one of those animals with massive eyes. iii

The teacher is talking to you about being nice. She is saying things like ‘It’s nice to be nice’ and ‘We don’t attack each other with sand in this classroom’. You do not dignify these banalities with a nod, let alone a verbal response. In the end, the teacher tells you she is going to call your dad. She tells you this twice, and twice you do not care.

‘I’m going to call your dad,’ she says. ‘I’m going to call your dad right now.’ When your dad answers the phone, the teacher changes her tone. What was once a nasal drone is now a breathy singsong that makes her sound manically chipper, as if she’s determined to have a really good time despite life being despicable. ‘Your daughter is not saying anything… We didn’t know she was… We really need to know… We need to know if children don’t… No, she’s not speaking at all… She’s also just attacked several other children… Sand…’

You’re pissed off when your dad arrives. You know this because you feel like frowning. You look at your dad, frowning. Your dad looks at you but he’s not frowning. He doesn’t say anything. He just starts walking you home. While he is walking you home, you want to ask him what on earth he was thinking, sending you to a school where they don’t even teach you how to read. But then he asks you if you want pizza for tea.

‘Do you want pizza for tea?’ he asks.

You nod. Even though you eated pizza yesterday, another pizza can’t hurt.

‘What do you say?’

In most families, when an adult asks a child what do you say, it means ‘Don’t be a little shit, say please’ or ‘Say thank you, you little shit’. In your family, however, it just means you are required to speak.

‘Yes,’ you say.

‘What do you say?’

‘Yes, please.’

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