"heaven is for realz"*

ok, so i'm no theologist, nor am i particularly political anymore (one election night crying tears of doom in my dorm room because bush won + another crying tears of joy because obama won, which both resulted in approximately the exact same crap politically = a touch of apathy for me), but this story is so blatantly out of control, i must discuss it.

fox news recently interviewed a now seven-year-old boy who claims to have visited heaven when he was four and in the hospital with a five-day-old burst appendix. now, i know full grown adults who have been rendered insane by the pain/medication associated with an un-burst appendix, so forgive me if i don't fully trust the validity of this story. also, i've known lots of kids, and their wily, intuitive natures are often completely underestimated. they are crazy little sponges, topped with an insatiable need to please their grown ups. so, it's this next part that really gets me: when asked what jesus looks like by the fox news correspondent, who is left breathless after the boy says god is so big he can hold the world in his hands (revelation!), this child says jesus had "a rough but kind face and sea-blue eyes and a smile that lit up the heavens." and, i repeat, this kid is seven, relating an event that happened to him when he was four.

i've heard kids say a lot of really precocious, adult things, like "i wanted to play, not have a conversation" and "man, that never gets old." where do these bursts of articulation come from? not out of body experiences or visits to other worlds, but instead from someplace decidedly less extraordinary - their parents. and unless this kid's been reading nicholas sparks, i think i know where he got this idea.

*for the record, i don't know if heaven is for realz. i don't. and i have zero issue with people who feel that they do. however, i have millions of issues with people exploiting little kids on national tv.