NICK: Daddy?
ME: Yes.
NICK: Who were the first people?
ME: No one really knows. There’s a Bible story that says the first people were Adam and Eve. God made them and they lived in a garden. But that’s just a story. Probably, there were no first people. We evolved over thousands of years from something that looked like ape.
NICK: What the frick? We were apes???
ME: Not exactly. But we probably had a common ancestor with apes.
NICK: WE USED TO LOOK LIKE APES?
ME: Thousands of years ago.
NICK: I’M GONNA HAVE NIGHTMARES!
ME: No, no, no. It’s not scary. It just means that humans were different. We looked different thousands of years ago.
NICK: LIKE APES???
ME: Probably more like apes, yes.
NICK: Lord, God! I don’t wanna look like an ape!
ME: You don’t look like an ape! I mean people and apes have a common ancestor. And some people became apes and some people became people.
NICK: What the frick? I’m gonna have a nightmare where God comes down and HE HAS AN APE FACE!!!
ME: No, you’re not.
NICK: Yes! And the ape God comes down and he kills the human God!
ME: They’re the same God! I mean…no one knows if God…Okay…listen –
NICK: There are two Gods! The ape God and the human God! They have a common ancestor!
ME: That’s not what –
NICK: I don’t want to go to heaven, now.
ME: Why not?
NICK: Everyone there will have an ape face.
ME: No, they won’t.
NICK: Yes, they will. Because heaven has all the dead people so if people used to look like apes, most of the people in heaven will have ape faces.
ME: (pause) You make a good point.
David Lee White 