Anyhow, I look after Jackie while my sister works. He's a good little kid—spoiled, but what kid isn't, these days?
It was I who heard it first, as a matter of fact. You see, I'm around Jackie a lot more than his mother is.
I was making Jackie's bed one morning when he came up behind me, and grabbed me round the waist, and asked, real serious, "Aunt Dorothy, are the stars really other suns like this one, and do they have planets too?"
I said, "Why, sure, Jackie. I thought you knew that."
He gave me a hug. "Thanks, Aunt Dorothy. I thought Mig was kidding me."
"Who's Mig?" I asked. I knew most of the kids on the block, you see, but there was a new little girl on the corner. I asked, "Is she the little Jackson girl?"
Jackie said, "Mig isn't a girl!" And did he sound disgusted! "Besides," he said, "Mig doesn't live 'round here at all. His name is really Migardolon Domier, but I call him Mig. He doesn't really talk to me. I mean, just inside my head."
I said, "Oh." I laughed a little bit, too, because Jackie isn't really an imaginative kid. But I guess most kids go through the imaginary-playmate stage. I had one when I was a kid. I called her Bitsy—but anyway, Jackie just ran out to play, and I didn't think about it again until one day he asked me what a spaceship looked like.
So I took him to see that movie—you know the one Paul Douglas played in about the trip to Mars—but would you believe it, the kid just stuck up his nose.
"I mean a real spaceship!" he said. "Mig showed me a lot better one than that!"