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Harry Schiller is drawing a MICHIGAN tattoo on my left shoulder using a black ballpoint pen. It’s a MICHIGAN tattoo because I’m wearing a yellow MICHIGAN t-shirt. This is also the reason that he calls me Mitch-igan. Yesterday he drew a “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” tattoo on the same shoulder. The tattoo was surrounded by two yin-yangs (I don’t know why) and a Batman symbol (because I asked him to draw it). But today the “M” in MICHIGAN is slanted the wrong way so he turns it into a large squiggle that looks slightly like an irate protozoan.
When Harry’s done drawing the protozoan, he sits on my lap. He estimates that he’s three feet tall and the last time he weighed himself, the scale said 55 lbs. His hair is blond, long, and goes everywhere but in his face. I ask him how old he is and he says, “Seven and I’m turning eight soon.” Then he falls off my lap. At this point I decide to interview him.
“What’s an interview?” he asks from the ground.
“I want to write down your opinions on stuff,” I say. He thinks this is a good idea.
Harry attends the camp I work at on Martha’s Vineyard and he’s in the 7-9 age group. Collecting Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards is one of his favorite activities.
“What is Yu-Gee-Oh?” I ask.
“No! Yu-JEE-oh,” he says. Apparently the G is soft. “You can get comics of it, videos of it, DVDs of it, and movies of it.”
“How many Yu-Gi-Oh cards do you have?”
“I have over a thousand I would say.”
Really?
“Well, I have more than a hundred so that means I have a thousand.”
Harry then reaches into the waistband of his basketball shorts and pulls out three bent Yu-Gi-Oh cards. He offers them to me but I decline to hold them. I try to stay away from other people’s waistband sweat.
June, a college student and fellow counselor, approaches Harry and I. Harry informs me that June has a crush on him.
“Do you have a crush on her?” I ask.
“No.”
“Do a lot of girls have crushes on you?”
“I don’t really know. She’s the only one I’ve ever asked.”
I ask June if she has a thing for Harry and she confirms. “We got married the other week,” she says.
“NO WE DIDN’T!” Harry yells.
I ask Harry if he likes girls. He thinks about it seriously, and then says, “The ones that are skinny and have long hair.”
“Why do you like those girls?”
“Cuz they’re hot.”
There’s a girl named Ruby who is Harry’s sister but Harry thinks she’s sort of annoying.
We’ve been talking about girls for too long. “If you were an animal, which one would you be?” I ask.
Harry turns to me. “Are you talking to me?”
There’s nobody else near us and certainly nobody else that I’ve been interviewing for the past half hour. “Yes, I’m talking to you.”
“I would be a cheetah.”
Why?
“Because they’re disgusting and when they capture an animal they have blood all over them.” He points to my notes. “Hey, look at all my opinions.”
Harry has lots of opinions. I quiz him on all sorts of subjects while we play Scrabble with two other Counselor-Camper teams.
This is what he has to say on Superheroes…
I’d be Batman [which is awesome because Batman is the best Superhero ever. See my column on the subject.] I just like him because I like bats and I like Batman, so what’s the difference. He’s a bat and a man. I’d sort of like to have superpowers because then you’re different from other people and you could save the world a lot of times and make thousands and thousands of dollars. I wouldn’t want to be the guy that runs really fast because he’s like out of control. He’s like a dude. He’s like, “Yo.”
On who his favorite famous people are…
George Washington and Matsui. [For those of you who don’t know, that’s the first President of the United States of America and a Japanese outfielder for the New York Yankees, Hideki Matsui.] I don’t know why I just said that.
On what his parents do for a living…
I don’t know. My mom takes care of me and my sister, and my dad helps people with companies and then gets part of the money and he volunteers at my school.
On whether or not he likes school (he’s going into the second grade next year)…
Not really. Yeah, sort of.
On his future career…
I wanna be a CIA agent even if I have to shave off all my hair. I sort of like spying and I love weapons and they do stuff that I really want to do and I sort of like the Army. The hardest part of being a CIA agent is not being seen. It’s sort of like the Navy SEALs. You have to work hard to even get into the SEALs. A Navy SEAL wakes up and gets to work to start being a Navy SEAL. They sort of have to do like pushups and take1000 walk-runs along the beach. They want you to have a new life. They’re sort of mean to you but the guys who do it to you have been through it and sometimes they make you stay up all night.
On what kind of job George W. Bush is doing…
I would say good but I have no idea what you’re talking about. I like him. He’s the capitol of the Army and he owns most of the United States and other people make him food and he doesn’t have to pay for it. It’s a good life actually.
On living in 1955…
Well, you know how everyone thinks they have a good life? But the servants a hundred years ago in Rome thought their lives were nothing because they were just servants.
On being a servant in 2005…
I guess they think their lives are like nothing.
After Scrabble, Harry and I get tennis rackets and whack balls at the big green tennis wall. The wall is 20 ft. by 40 ft. but Harry usually misses it. Fortunately, chasing the ball is just as much fun as hitting the ball. At one point, Harry looks at me and says, “Watch this.” He’s about eight feet in front of the wall as lets go of the ball and watches it bounce twice. He then swings the racket with two hands and sends the ball flying ten feet wide of the wall.
After tennis, we play a word association game. I say a word and he says the first thing that pops into his head. I ask him if he understands and he says he does. The first word I say is “Camp.” “Do I say that in French?” he asks. So I re-explain the rules and he understands for real this time.
Here are the results of the word association game (my words are on the left, his responses are on the right):
Camp…Un
Ball…The
Friends…Kids
Adults…Kids
America…Guns
Dog…Cat
Animal…Rope
Car…Tree
Music…Electric Guitar
Flying…Surfing
Angry…Tennis
Funny…Glue
I’m not sure what to make of those words, but I think we should all be slightly concerned that the word America makes a seven-year-old immediately think of guns. And maybe Harry’s parents shouldn’t sign him up for tennis lessons anytime soon.
Some day Harry Schiller will be a CIA agent with a tall skinny wife and maybe if he buys most of the United States he’ll become the President. I’m just glad I had the chance to meet him before he got famous (famous like George Washington or Matsui).
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