{"id":13445,"date":"2013-05-18T08:53:59","date_gmt":"2013-05-18T12:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=13445"},"modified":"2013-05-18T09:26:31","modified_gmt":"2013-05-18T13:26:31","slug":"story-up-my-sleeve-18-jeffty-is-five-by-harlan-ellison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/story-up-my-sleeve-18-jeffty-is-five-by-harlan-ellison\/","title":{"rendered":"Story Up My Sleeve #18: &#8220;Jeffty Is Five,&#8221; by Harlan Ellison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-size: 85%; line-height: 1.25em;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/littleboy_writing_1940s.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" alt=\"Jeffty, maybe\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/littleboy_writing_1940s_sm.jpg?resize=275%2C347&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"275\" height=\"347\" \/><\/a><em>[Don&#8217;t know what this is? See the <\/em><a title=\"Story Up My Sleeve posts: the background\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/story-up-my-sleeve-the-background\/\" target=\"_blank\">Story Up My Sleeve<\/a><em> background page.]<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What I mean by five years old is not that Jeffty was retarded. I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s what it was. Smart as a whip for five years old; very bright, quick, cute, a funny kid.<\/p>\n<p>But he was three feet tall, small for his age, and perfectly formed: no big head, no strange jaw, none of that. A nice, normal-looking five-year-old kid. Except that he was the same age as I was: twenty-two.<\/p>\n<p>When he spoke it was with the squeaking, soprano voice of a five-year-old; when he walked it was with the little hops and shuffles of a five-year-old; when he talked to you it was about the concerns of a five-year-old&#8230; comic books, playing soldier, using a clothespin to attach a stiff piece of cardboard to the front fork of his bike so the sound it made when the spokes hit was like a motorboat, asking questions like <em>why does that thing do that like that<\/em>, how high is up, how old is old, why is grass green, what&#8217;s an elephant look like? At twenty-two, he was five.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n[<a title=\"Google Books: 'Shatterday,' by Harlan Ellison\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=sGeNkucZAFsC&amp;pg=PT26#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Don&#8217;t know what this is? See the Story Up My Sleeve background page.] What I mean by five years old is not that Jeffty was retarded. I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s what it was. Smart as a whip for five years old; very bright, quick, cute, a funny kid. But he was three feet tall, small [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3448,105,3460,3477],"tags":[3465],"class_list":{"0":"post-13445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-story-up-my-sleeve","7":"category-short-fiction","8":"category-science-fiction-06_writing","9":"category-fantasy-06_writing","10":"tag-harlan-ellison","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3uR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13445"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13661,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13445\/revisions\/13661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}