Once upon a time, there was a woman named Emily Smith, and her son Jimmy (born on September 4, 2016.) Emily herself was best known for her reunions with several of her friends (Katherine Stein, Meredith Reda, and Jessie Thigpen) in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2017, and 2018 (her 2017 reunion was supposed to have been in 2016 but it was pushed back a year because otherwise it would collide with her son's birth.)
Emily was a very polite mother to her son. She always lets him laugh at things that amuse him, and she lets him talk about things he loves.
Just one day before Jimmy's second birthday, Emily gave birth to 2 twin girls named Tanya and Blanca.
One day, when Jimmy was 3 years old, Emily was going on a trip to the mountains. Jimmy had to stay home and a babysitter, named Kerry Lowell, was to look after Jimmy. Kerry was a man scheduled to replace Jessie Thigpen (one of Emily's friends) after the day Tanya and Blanca were born. And when Jimmy is with Kerry, he is encouraged by Kerry to be more mainstream. For example, Kerry encourages Jimmy to laugh at things that are MEANT to be funny, but that Jimmy himself doesn't like. And he always wants Jimmy to talk about things that most people like to talk about.
After Emily's trip was over, she came home and it was getting close to Christmas. Jimmy got a special present for Christmas; this was a collection of pictures of his mother from her childhood. She also spent some of her time teaching him about nice parts of her childhood. These include Sesame Street, videocassettes, road trips, and many more things.
After Christmas, a new year began. Emily asked Jimmy, "Have I ever told you about the Tower of Longevity??" Jimmy shook his head. Emily introduced Jimmy to the tower, and it's a special tower. It can be visited only at night, and you must be on a high enough floor (the later you were born the higher the minimum floor you have to be on is) to do what is necessary. Jimmy and Emily rode the elevator to the 31st floor, and when they got out of the elevator they saw a sign saying "This floor is for populations where the youngest member was born between May 12, 2016 and April 15, 2017." Jimmy was happy that they got on the right floor. They searched for a room to go to, and they found a good one. At the back of the room, Emily and Jimmy found a sliding door and went out to the porch to see what to do. Emily said, "Jimmy, look up at the sky." Jimmy said, "I see the moon." Emily said, "Look very hard. If you quiet yourself while you look very hard, something really loveable will happen." Jimmy started to hear a voice talk to him. This voice was Dolly Parton, happy that Jimmy could hear her. "Jimmy, your goal throughout your life will be to conquer all bad thoughts of yours."
After that, Emily took Jimmy home and Jimmy calmed down nicely. He was glad to know something he can do at night, but he must conquer all bad thoughts before he can do so. Another rule is that if at least one of his sisters is accompanying him on the way to the tower, he has to be on at least floor 35.
The following summer; Emily took all 3 of her children to McDonald's and they got toys. Tanya and Blanca each got a Goldilocks toy that they loved, but Jimmy got a Baby Bear toy. He complained because he wanted a Goldilocks toy. He got the first bad thought he had to deal with.
Emily respected that Jimmy would prefer a Goldilocks toy, and this was resolved as follows: she let him have one of the Goldilocks toys, and the Baby Bear toy was given to Kerry Lowell's son David.
Jimmy was happy again. Once again Emily took Jimmy to the Tower of Longevity. Katherine, one of Emily's friends, looked after Tanya and Blanca every time Jimmy went to the tower. Jimmy went out to the porch of one of the rooms of the 31st floor and looked as hard as he could at the nighttime sky and listened to Dolly Parton say, "You have done well with your first bad thought."
The following Christmas, Emily made a new rule: Jimmy gets cake every evening during the Christmas holidays if he is able to think nice thoughts.
Now let's go back to the fall of 2016. In another house, there lived a woman named Stephanie. She was so excited to be a mother; her daughter Julia was born.
For Julia's first 4 years, she spends most of her time having the life of a traditional girl. But like Jimmy, Julia learned about the Tower of Longevity and that she needed to be on at least the 31st floor to talk to Dolly Parton.
When Julia and Jimmy are 7 years old, they meet at the tower. They get to know each other well and make each other happy.
Julia has many toys that Jimmy sometimes borrows. One of the most loveable quotes of Jimmy to Julia is "I am your friend." Julia always says, "Yes, you are my friend" in response.
For Christmas, Jimmy got a pair of clown fish that he can visit whenever he goes to Julia's house. He named them Sandy and Candy.
That night, Jimmy went to the Tower of Longevity again, and Dolly Parton was very happy.
Now, let's move on to what Emily and her daughters do when Jimmy is at Julia's house. She spends most of her time having fun with them the way little girls usually do. They have adventures similar to the ones Emily had when she grew up. Sometimes they even go to the Tower of Longevity, and as you know they have to be on at least the 35th floor.
When either Tanya or Blanca makes it to the 35th floor, she talks to Dolly Parton in the night sky the same way Jimmy does, with the only difference is the floor they have to visit.
Let's move on to the subject of school now. Jimmy spends most of his time learning to be successful every year, and this makes his mother proud. But sometimes Jimmy has to accept doing things he has no interests in, such as speaking Spanish.
As a privilege, Jimmy (sometimes accompanied by Julia) goes to the Tower of Longevity every Saturday night. Everyone who Jimmy interacts with knows this is something he loves.
During Jimmy's time in grades K-2, his teachers always let him have cake every time the class reaches the end of a day that's the last school day before any period of 3 or more consecutive days of no school.
But things changed when Jimmy got into third grade. The Friday before Labor Day, Jimmy was saying, "I can't wait for cake!" But his teacher said, "Students in grades 3 and above get pie, not cake." Jimmy was not happy. Once again, he had a thought that made him unhappy that he needed to replace.
When Jimmy got home from school, he told this to his mother (Emily) and she understood, and it was resolved by having Emily and Jimmy have a special dinner where Jimmy got to have cake at the very end.
Jimmy also had a conversation with Julia about this event, and she was glad that Jimmy always tries to resolve any statement that he dislikes.
The following Christmas, Jimmy gets a special present; a collection of tin whistles of different sizes. He loves to play different songs on all of his whistles. The whistles are named after the notes that are played by filling in all 6 of the holes. These whistles are called B-flat, C, D, E-flat, F, and G.
Another Christmas present of Jimmy was a beautiful fish tank, where he had a lot of fish his mother can take care of at the appropriate rate.
Jimmy sometimes takes one of his whistles to school and shows some people how good of a player he is.
In the middle of January, Emily went to a big meeting; and Kerry Lowell once again had to babysit Jimmy. "Jimmy," asked Kerry, "Why didn't you want to have pie??" Jimmy said, "I love cake; I don't want this to change." But Kerry said, "As we get older, we have to deal with change."
Late in the evening, Emily came home from her long meeting and found out what Kerry said to Jimmy. She told Jimmy that people have different personalities and different opinions on things. But the following morning, Jimmy got cake again. He always tries to replace negative thoughts with positive ones.
The following spring, Emily bought several chickens. One chicken is red, one is orange, one is yellow, one is white, and one is speckled.
Jimmy loves all 5 of the chickens; he feeds them corn every day.
Along came summer. Jimmy, Tanya, and Blanca all went on a vacation with Emily and her friends Katherine, Meredith, and Jessie. One of their favorite adventures was going to the pool. Unknown to them, Kerry Lowell also went, and saw Jimmy, and made Jimmy talk about a character called "The Vowel Messer". The Vowel Messer is a story about a clown who loves to change vowels in words according to a rule. There are 10 vowel sounds that participate here; they're grouped in pairs, and each vowel is substituted by the other vowel in the same pair. (Note that only the SOUND of the word determines the vowel that's substituted; the spelling doesn't affect how this game works.)
A in can and A in cane
E in set and E in seat
I in miss and I in mice
O in ox and O in oaks
U in fund and OU in found
But Jimmy was not happy. He said, "That clown is just not funny to me."
Jimmy now had a bad thought that he could not replace with a good one. Kerry Lowell encouraged Jimmy to laugh at something that's not at all funny to Jimmy.
But the following morning, Emily took Jimmy to an amusement park, and he laughed at many of the rides! He loved them all! Emily and her friends were proud of Jimmy.
Then along came Christmas. Jimmy wanted to watch the snow fall down and stay inside. To him, virgin snow is nice and pretty.
Jimmy got a special Christmas present, titled "Gallery of Images of Emily Smith, Katherine Stein, Meredith Reda, and Jessie Thigpen". It is a photo album of pictures of Emily and 3 of her friends that range from birth to present.
Jimmy went to the Tower of Longevity once again. When he went into the balcony of his room on the 31st floor, he looked at the nighttime sky and heard Dolly Parton say, "You're so good at thinking nicely!"
Just over a year later, Tanya and Blanca were in fourth grade. In social studies class they learned about United States geography, and that sometimes different states can have cities with the same name. Their teacher taught them a song called "Where Is Columbus??" Its lyrics go:
(Teacher) Where is Columbus?? Where is Columbus?? Do you know?? Do you know??
(Tanya) I say Ohio.
(Blanca) I say Georgia.
(Teacher) You are both correct!
(All) The United States has so many cities. So many cities. So many cities. The United States has so many cities. And some of them have the same name.
Meanwhile, Jimmy was in sixth grade, the first of 7 years he and Julia designate with a special color scheme. Sixth grade is purple; the following years are teal, blue, yellow, green, red, and violet respectively.
This was a nice thought of Jimmy.
However, he also learned that failing academic courses means he can be retained. Such an event is symbolized with gray.
Jimmy gave himself a new goal, and this goal is to not get retained in school. He promises everyone in his life he'll try his best.
Sixth grade was the start of a new era for Jimmy in school. He had different teachers for different subjects. His English and math teachers were women with personalities similar to the kind of teacher he prefers. But his science and social studies teachers were less comforting.
For social studies, Jimmy told his teacher about the song his sisters sing, "Where Is Columbus??" But his teacher said, "No, that song is for fourth graders, not sixth graders. Fourth graders learn about United States regions. Sixth graders learn about the world and its different eras of history. In a year from now, you'll get to hear a similar international version of the song."
Jimmy was unhappy. For the fall of his sixth grade year he learned things like ancient cultures. Male superiority was a common part of society, and Jimmy sees this as meaning women are not important. His social studies class felt like 2 hours to him.
Jimmy's main interest in early human culture was the time of ancient languages, especially Latin and Greek. These 2 languages have many words that English words derive from.
Jimmy had a new goal; this was to find a way to think about his sixth grade year nicely.
The best choice was that he now plays a musical instrument in band. At the end of his sixth grade school year he went to the Tower of Longevity once again, and when he went to the 31st floor and looked out the window. Dolly Parton was proud.
Seventh grade was like sixth grade in many ways. In social studies, Jimmy was taught something his sisters were taught the previous year, except one thing. This is that it is about the WORLD, rather than the United States. Tanya and Blanca, as fifth graders, learned about the United States's history.
Jimmy found a pattern in social studies. Kindergartners learn simply about the world around them. First graders learn about people and families. Second graders learn about neighborhoods. Third graders learn about communities. Fourth graders learn about regions of the United States. Fifth graders learn about the history of the United States. Sixth and seventh graders learn about the world.
Then, along came eighth grade. When it came to teachers' personalities, eighth grade was the exact opposite of sixth and seventh grades. It took a while for Jimmy to realize an important fact about math. Starting when you're in eighth grade, numbers are no longer the main elements of mathematics. Algebraic expressions are.
Jimmy did as well as he could in math. At the end of the school year he was glad to have succeeded, and the night after he finished school he went to the Tower of Longevity. He went to the balcony of one of the rooms of the 31st floor and looked out the window, and Dolly Parton was proud of him.
Ninth grade was the start of a new era for Jimmy. His academic courses were important to pass.
Now, let's take a break from focusing on Jimmy and focus on what's going on with Julia independent of Jimmy. Julia now has a younger brother (born when Julia is 9 years old.) Julia spent her life as a 9-year-old needing to adjust to her baby brother, a significant thing to do.
Julia is a lot like Jimmy in terms of her likes and dislikes. Both like chickens and both think it's nice to think about good habits. But Julia's little brother Davin is very different; he likes ducks better than chickens, and he prefers to talk about things because they're significant.
Now, ninth grade is a special year for Jimmy. He was so happy because he's now in high school and got to spend some of his time thinking about possible good stories of his near future.
Geometry had one thing really exciting. When a problem involves pi, he is allowed to leave the answer in terms of pi and doesn't have to worry about whether to use 3.14 or the pi key.
At the end of Jimmy's ninth grade school year, his mother congratulated him for loving geometry.
Jimmy learned one important fact about school. First semester is usually the developing part of a school year. This is when time goes by slowly to make time for many changes. Second semester is generally faster; there can be certain changes students wish for but they feel like there isn't enough time for them.
Jimmy's mother Emily is proud, but then Kerry Lowell comes to visit and rates Jimmy as bad for not laughing at the jokes he tells Jimmy.
Kerry Lowell loves to play Vowel Messer all the time and really wishes Jimmy could laugh at his statements. (Remember the pairs of vowel sounds that the game involves switching. Think of pairs of words with the vowels in them; hat/hay, pet/pea, sit/sigh, hot/hoe; cut/cow. Also remember that only the pronunciation of the word determines how the vowel sounds are messed. For example, many has the sound of pet, not hat, so the game of Vowel Messer says the a in many with the sound of pea, not hay.
Now comes Jimmy's tenth grade year. Algebra 2 is a big challenge, but apart from that class he is still happy to like school.
But sometimes, Jimmy is forced to accept things he dislikes. A common quote is, "Three-year-olds laugh at things that are funny to themselves. Sixteen-year-olds laugh at things that are funny to others, even if not to themselves."
Meanwhile, Tanya and Blanca were in eighth grade and instead of taking Algebra 1, they took a course called consumer math.
Now let's go in to Jimmy's eleventh grade year. He is taking chemistry and loves most of the periodic table. Yes, all of it except the name of one chemical element, this is plutonium. He perceives it as a reference to the statement that Pluto is a planet. He prefers to call this element ashfordium.
One night, after school, Jimmy visited the Tower of Longevity again. He went to the 31st floor and out to the balcony of one of the rooms. But instead of Dolly Parton, he saw Donald Trump, asking "Why won't you call plutonium by its rightful name??" Jimmy said, "It was named after the sequence of planets starting with Uranus, at a time Pluto was thought to be a planet. We now know it's not a planet, and thus the name no longer makes sense." Donald Trump said, "Oxygen is named after the mistaken belief that all acids have oxygen, but nobody ever thought that name needed to be fixed."
When Jimmy went back to school the next morning, he talked with his chemistry teacher about the conversation he had. She said, "Don't worry. Plutonium isn't that important to humans. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen are the elements most important to humans."
That evening, Kerry Lowell met Jimmy again and said, "If you keep calling plutonium ashfordium, I'll keep wanting to be a vowel messer."
Jimmy was not happy. He wanted to have a conversation about this with his mother, but he learned that she was at a big meeting.
Another class Jimmy took was called pre-calculus mathematics. A special subject of this course was trigonometry, where he learned many different kinds of identities. Some of them can be learned simply by defining the functions in terms of varialbes o, a, and h. These letters come from the words opposite, adjacent, and hypotenuse. Sine is o/h, cosine is a/h, tangent is o/a, cotangent is a/o, secant is h/a, and cosecant is h/o. Reciprocal, quotient, and Pythagorean identities can be learned this way; the letters o, a, and h behave like regular variables with the only additional thing to remember is that o^2 + a^2 = h^2. But then there are identities such as sin 2x = 2 sin x cos x, that CANNOT be learned this way.
At the very end of his eleventh-grade year, Jimmy went to the Tower of Longevity again and saw Dolly Parton. She told him he did a good job in school.
Now on to Jimmy's twelfth grade year. Jimmy is in a computer class, learning the different things you can do on computers.
But when Christmas came, Jimmy wanted gloves but had to accept having mittens instead. Jimmy was not happy.
Jimmy resolved this problem by asking his mother to mail him gloves.
And when Jimmy visited the Tower of Longevity that night, he met Dolly Parton, and she was happy.
Five months later, Jimmy finished school and got a special present from his mother Emily. This was a group of 7 putty containers, each one with a different color and firmness. The softest was teal, then orange, red, green, violet, blue, and magenta is the firmest.
Jimmy loved them a lot but had to resolve one dislike about them. This is that they are labelled Pre-1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 when it comes to their firmness. Jimmy's mother (Emily) successfully let him resolve this by letting him think of them as simply 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
Jimmy did a good job with resolving this. But then somebody gave him a firmer one, colored brown. Knowing Jimmy calls them 1 through 7 rather than Pre-1 through 6, they teased Jimmy by calling it number 9.
Jimmy tried it and compared it with the magenta putty that he calls number 7. He saw that it was a lot firmer, and he could hardly shape it.
Jimmy's mother Emily compared the firmnesses of the putties and said it made perfect sense that they are so far apart. But then Emily contacted the putty company and asked if they had a putty in between the firmnesses for Jimmy to call number 8. It appeared that they didn't have any with that firmness.
That somebody appeared to be Julia. Jimmy learned it out and found he and Julia were both happy that he had some putties to play with for special events.
Then Jimmy had a conversation with Julia about how much he loves his putties. He did a good job understanding the number-color correspondence correctly, and Julia understands how much sense it makes to Jimmy and agrees. Teal=1; orange=2; red=3; green=4; violet=5; blue=6; magenta=7.
The next day, Julia's younger brother Davin came to visit. He was saying he uses the numbers used by the company; that is, Pre-1 and 1 through 6. He also uses 8 for the brown one Julia gave Jimmy.
Meanwhile, Tanya and Blanca were in their last 2 years of high school and spent a lot of time focusing on having many friends. Tanya especially loved school for this reason.
Tanya had many things to love, including friends and memories of her earlier life.
Now, let's go back to Jimmy. One day he was having a conversation with Julia about capitals. She gave him a quiz about the capitals of different countries. It started out with Russia, and Jimmy said Moscow. Then came Canada, and Jimmy said Ottawa. Then came China, and Jimmy said Beijing. Those were all correct.
After a while, Davin showed up and asked, "What's the capital of Denmark??" Jimmy said Copenhagen, going by what he learned when he was little. But Davin said, "No. Denmark has 2 parts. One part has Copenhagen as its capital and one part has Nuuk as its capital. So, Denmark has 2 capitals, Copenhagen and Nuuk." Jimmy was very unhappy and called his mother on the phone, saying "Julia was giving me a quiz on capitals of countries, and after a few problems Davin showed up to make me think hard." Emily (Jimmy's mother) said, "Don't worry. Sometimes people will encourage you to think differently."
Jimmy always thought Julia was very kind. Julia even reminded Jimmy of Dolly Parton, a magical woman he meets on some nights where he visits the Tower of Longevity.
Now time for another subject, chemistry. Julia gives Jimmy a quiz on the periodic table. Each problem is one of 2 kinds. In one kind, Julia gives an atomic number and Jimmy names the element. In the other, Julia gives a chemical element and Jimmy names the atomic number. When Davin showed up again, Jimmy got the same kinds of problems, only dealing with atomic masses.
Jimmy went to the Tower of Longevity that night and saw Dolly Parton when he looked out the window. She was happier than ever with Jimmy.