Claims Were Made. One of Them Was True.

There is a game I play with my boys where I tell them I am bigger than things they know are bigger than me. I could never say why. The strip figured it out.

It starts with a gorilla. No you're not. A grizzly bear. No. A blue whale, and now Griffin is on his feet explaining that a blue whale is the largest mammal on Earth, and I say yes, and he is genuinely offended by the physics. Then the Earth. You're standing on it. And yet.

They know I am lying. They lie there on the rug afterward anyway, staring at the ceiling, working on it. I have never been able to say what I was teaching them. Something about the impossible. Something about wanting to be larger than life to them for as long as that lasts.

I could not find the ending, so I let the strip find it. Joe at the desk after a bad day, the laptop the only light on, and a kid in the doorway who hands the game back. You're bigger than a blue whale. Yeah. I am.

That last part has not happened. But drawing it told me what I was doing. I was not teaching them scale. I was teaching them how to make somebody feel big, on the theory that one day I would need it back. Eight panels this time, because the game only works if it runs away from you first.