Me and My Martian

I have a pet Martian. He sits on my shoulder and asks me uncomfortable questions.

Not actual size

Now, before you rush to call the boobie hatch (which you oughtn’t count, as Thurber notes), ‘It’ is a trope: first cousin of Elwood P. Doud’s Pooka, Very fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson? My Martian is a third cousin, thrice removed from Socrates’ Daemon. Some use the old trope of the angel and devil on one’s shoulder, but my Martian does not belong to that clan. Different faerie DNA.

I started using it back in college, as a sort of trick to think of science fiction notions for stories. The science fiction thing passed, but the Martian has remained.

He’s the fellow who asks me about things we take for granted, and in explaining human behavior to him, I learn a lot about us. Humans, I mean.

He’s the one who asked, one day: “What do ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ signify? What practical use do they have?”

Or the one who asked “Why are there all those fertility eggs on the sacred winter festival tree?”

He was the one who asked me, one day: “Hey, dummy! Do you know what your name means?”

He was the one who asked “Why is it that humans believe that by sophisticating their instinctual behavior they’re still not bound by it?” We were passing a beauty salon, and he was taken with the grooming behavior displayed inside.

The Martian loves ape and monkey films on PBS, as a result.

The Martian asks me to explain simple human behaviors, like “Why do men wear ties?” and “Why do we drive on the right side of the road, and the English and Australians drive on the wrong side of the road?” (I didn’t say he was smart. I just said that he asks questions.)

And he’s the one who asked me  ”Why do all the writers in LA wait months for a couple of column inches in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, when the Herald-Examiner is also a Los Angeles newspaper?” And, again, “Why is the Orange County Register reprinting New York Times and AP book reviews? Don’t they have any book reviewers in Orange County?”

So, while science fiction was ceded to youth, the Martian has remained, and has been invaluable to my writing across the years.

What he does is force me to explain common things that we take for granted, but which we go along with, without ever asking “Why?”

Politics and politesse, rites, rituals and routine behaviors are what he asks me about, usually when I’m waiting somewhere for something, and he IS the one who asked me “How come so much of human life is spent in waiting, even if you’re the president of the USA?”

Which is why I started carrying sketch materials with me — because at least you can DO something when you’re waiting.

My Martian seems to have a parallel in Theodore Sturgeon’s “Ask The Next Question” philosophy.

Because once I think I’ve answered his annoying question, he then asks: WHY?

He’s the one who asked me, one day: “What is an ‘engineer’?” Now, I was raised by a civil engineer, both of my brothers are engineers and my father-in-law was, prior to his passing in early 2008, an engineer, but answering that question was a lot trickier than I ever thought it would be.

He was the one who asked me: “Why is a Glenview, Illinois political group trying to recruit me to save Oregon’s ‘Term Limits’ laws?“

And he’s the one who asked, “Who is the money behind Tucker Carlson’s ‘Daily Caller’ website?“

Or “Where in Wasilla, Alaska is the ‘Caribou Curtain’?“

Or, “Who the fuck is Saul Alinsky?“

Or, “Why did (the late) Frank Kelly Freas draw you on the Fourth of July, 1976?”

That one’s easy: Because he was a really nice guy.

Courage.