I told this story to a human recently, and I think because I told the story to a human recently, I have concern that I told it on this podcast recently.

I don’t think I did tell this story on the podcast.

However, the last time this came up, I had told the story before on the podcast.

Maybe more than once.

I did some cursory looking.

In fact, I did enough cursory looking that I also decided I didn’t like the way the layout worked on the Your Daily Likes website.

And so I updated that.

I also used lazy loading on that website, which is hilarious to me, but like, it was so many episodes that it was slow to load the page, so now it loads them in chunks.

But anyway, I’m going to tell a story, and it’s about aliens and writers and me, and I guess when I was school age, so let’s do it.

When I was a kid, I loved the Bruce Covill series of books.

Well, he wrote many, many books, but Bruce Covill was a children’s author, I guess still is, although I think he’s about 5,000 years old.

But he had a series of books in the My Teacher is an Alien series, and I loved that series of kids, and I would get each new one when it would come out at the, I guess, Scholastic Book Fair or something.

Okay, he’s not 1,000, he’s 73.

But he had this series of books that I just loved, where the first one was My Teacher is an Alien, and then it was like My Teacher Fried My Brains, and My Teacher Saved the Planet.

I’m doing this from memory, so I’m definitely missing some, but I liked these books.

And there was a thing where schools could have Bruce come and give interactive things with the students, like talk to them about writing books.

And he came to our school, and I was excited.

And for whatever reason, I don’t know what made my class special, but my class was going to get to have a special session with Bruce Covill.

And I was pretty into this, because this was my first time meeting what to me was a famous person, as far as I can recall.

And so I was excited, and he comes in, and he’s giving a talk about whatever.

I don’t remember the details, but what I do remember is this.

He’s like, all right, now we’re all going to build an alien together.

And the class is about 25 of us, and he starts with one kid in the back, and he’s like, all right, what color is the alien?

And he goes to the next kid, and sighs, and he goes to the next kid, whatever.

And he gets to me, and he says, eyes.

And I said, three.

I really feel like maybe I told this story on the podcast, like potentially very recently, so I apologize if I did.

But I said, three.

And he was shocked, because he’s like, oh, people always give me a color, like blue, or brown, or yellow.

And you said, three.

And I was like, yeah, it’s an alien.

It should have three eyes.

And he’s like, well, I’ve been doing this talk for 20 years, and nobody has ever said a number before when I asked them for eyes.

So, good job.

And, of course, I was very pleased with myself.

So, I always remembered this, and I told my kids this story when I was reading them the books, because I read all three of my kids the series of my teacher’s alien books.

Some of the kids, I read some other books of his that I didn’t like as much.

But I did read this one with all of them, or read the series with all of them.

And so, I got to tell this story multiple times.

The most recent time was a while ago, because it was early in the pandemic.

And around June of 2020, no, May 31st of 2020, I now know, I emailed Bruce through his website.

And I said, hey, I first read my teacher’s alien when I was in elementary school.

I loved it.

I found it was a series.

I was thrilled.

I was in the right school for meet the author.

I was in the right class.

I got to spend a whole period with you.

Get our book signed.

You did this.

I told him the story that I just told you.

I don’t know why I’m telling you again.

And I said at the time in this email, you said that you’d been doing this exercise for years, and no one had ever provided a number for eyes, always just a color.

I was thrilled and proud, and I never forgot it.

I’m now 39, and the father of three kids.

I’ve read my teacher’s alien series to my older two and my youngest, and I started it up again this week, blah, blah, blah.

He writes back, and he says, many thanks for this email, which thoroughly delighted me.

June 2nd, 2020, for those of you keeping track.

When I was a young father, reading to my kids was one of my greatest pleasures.

So knowing that other dads are now reading my books to their own kids is a source of deep satisfaction, and I was charmed by your memory of that writing exercise.

I think you remain the only kid to not answer the eyes question with a color.

Tell your kids I said hello, and I hope all of you can remain safe during these very strange times.

Well, we remain strange during these very strange times.

Anyway, Bruce Colville loves me.

That’s the point.

Happy Thursday.

Lex.

Lex.