Imagine Alaska, Part 1: A silly little girl

She lounged on a lawn chair made for two and her vibrant curls were perfectly wild. Her tiny eyes read, with tiny hands, a magazine about wolves. Every few minutes she'd voice her love for these malevolent eyed killers by saying, "ooooo! Look at his cute little ears!" She was five years old. The world was a magnificent place to her. Her name, was Alaska.

"Alaska! Come in for dinner!"

Alaska dug her forked garden trough into the dirt and made tiny holes in the lawn. Her father sat on the porch watching her on the front lawn and every once and a while, quietly smiling to himself. This was an oddity because many fathers would be slightly disappointed in their daughters for making holes in their lawn deliberately but Alaska was a little girl who was her daddy's girl.

"Alaska!"

Her mother called a second time and this time she heard her mother say to her father, "Come on, now. Please help me get her in the house? I've cooked her favorite meal."

Alaska came running up to the door and sat down at the table. She looked out on the dinner table and saw brussel sprouts on the stalk and began to imagine them being harvested by tiny alien farmers. She saw their helmets and antennae sticking out from the helmets and pictured them at about 4 to 5 inches tall. On her alien planet, brussel sprouts were the equivalent of cabbages but to us, they looked much smaller. She saw a silo where they kept the giant cabbages like basketballs in the hoop-star machine at Dave&Busters.

She smiled and thought out loud, "daddy?"

"Yes hunnie?"

"Can we go to Dave&Busters again? That was fun and I like the..."

She went on incoherently about the various rides that she liked but to the untrained ear, it just sounded like the rantings of a very cute, but quick talking 6 year old.

"Alaska," said her mother, "Eat your brussel sprouts."

"I will mommy," She said. "Did you know that brussel sprouts are really alien cabbages? And they have silos to keep them in but the evil cat monsters that live there knock down the silos and eat the peaceful brussel cabbage people..."

The whole table laughed. First her mother, then her father and then Alaska. Unfortunately for her, she had no idea as to why they were laughing but she laughed anyway because they were.

Her mother turned to her and said, "Ok sweetheart, half an hour more to play outside and then it's straight to bed with you. You're a grumpy little firecracker when you don't get your sleep.

"Ok mommmy," she said.

She walked outside and ran to the bushes.

"Out of my way, purple toe, I need to see too!" Said Alaska.
She looked out on the grass and pretended to see three looming goblins walking towards her.

"If I can't find a good place to get a steak, I'm just going to go out and hunt it with my teeth," said Alaska, pretending to be the first goblin.

"I'm going to look for little girls in my grotto!" said Alaska as the second goblin.

"I smell a little girl in that bush!" said Alaska as the third goblin as she screamed, turned around and ran into a tree root that opened up as she fell downward...