From the mind of a 7-year old boy

Never having been a 7-year old boy myself, I find it fascinating to see more and more about how one of these little minds work.

Last week for part of his school assignments, I asked him to write a fictional story, just curious to see what he would come up with. I gave him the beginning and asked him to write the next part. I also thought I would provide him with an opportunity to talk about feelings -- which in his mind, are still vague and unnecessary parts of the human existence. I wanted to see how he would portray characters dealing with hard life lessons, etc. So here is the story beginning I wrote for him:

Once upon a time, in Sherwood Forest, there lived a chipmunk named Ogden. He was different from the other chipmunks in his family and his friends because he had a red stripe going down his back, instead of a black one like everyone else. Sometimes the other chipmunks made fun of Ogden because of this. One day he met a cardinal named Wilson. Wilson started to talk about Ogden's stripe....

And here is what Strider wrote (I went ahead and corrected the spelling for the sake of readability):

He loved it! Wilson was so big and fat that Ogden got on his back and they started to fly. They were on a journey for 7 years seeing all kinds of
different creatures.
But one day Ogden woke up and Wilson was gone. He ran and ran and ran until he came to a man-village. A boy captured him and beat him up. "It is horrible" Ogden thought. Then he escaped and saw acardinal. "Wilson! Wilson!" Ogden said. "My name is Hank." the cardinal said.
Then Ogden ran up a tree and found Wilson.

It wasn't quite the dissertation on feelings that I had been hoping for, but I decided to let him run with it anyway. So I told him the next day that I wanted him to write the next chapter. "What happened to Wilson?" I asked. Here is the next installment (This time I'll leave the original spelling):

Wilson got kid napt by his evil brothers. One of the brothers called himself the king of birds. Wilson said they took me to be a servent then a prisoner. He was tided to a tree! Ogden said the wizard isn't looking. I will untie you. But his plan did not work. Instead the wizard tied him up. They were so so so so mad! How will we ever get out? said Wilson. What going to happen? said Ogden.
Then to cardinals came named Hon and Ron. They untied Wilson and Ogden and battled the king and the wizard for 20 years until Hon killed the king. Wilson got his gun aimed at the wizard. The wizard said No, don't do that. You won.

I was still in suspense, so I asked for a third and final chapter the next day. Here is the conclusion!

They ast Ogden were he wanted to go. He said to see my mom.
They had been gone for 42 years until they met Mac. Mac knew
Ogden's mom. Mac took them to see Ogden's mom. The end.

My favorite part of the whole story was that Ogden wanted to see his mom. That's as close as I'm going to get to true (nice) feelings at this point I guess!