Guilt is a Tickle

Meredith was looking at the blog the other day and I was explaining about my post Conscience Visualized. After telling me that the picture on the post looked a lot like Merebith, she quickly corrected me and said, "Mom, that's not how my conscience works." Here it comes...I knew I was about to get schooled again in how her mind works. As with many things, it's easier for Meredith to draw me a picture than to explain it in words.  Here is what she drew:

The basic gist is that when there is a decision to be made where her conscience needs to be involved, she goes to a machine (first picture) and presses either the "yes" or the "no" button. The machine transmits the signal to "Nerd," the ugly guy on the other machine (second picture). Based on which button she pushed, a green or a red light will flash for Nerd to see. If the red light flashes, then Nerd makes a big, mechanical arm come out to tickle Merebith (third picture), which gives Meredith the feeling of guilt.

Meredith said that Merebith lives a very complicated life--a very mechanical life. Wait until you learn about all of the different machines Merebith uses. I'll dedicate another post to all the machines she's told me about, but one example that I love is the empathy machine.

The empathy machine is shaped like a shoe. When Meredith wants to "get in someone else's shoes," Merebith steps onto the machine, types in the name of a person whose shoes Meredith wants to get in, and then in a Star Trek-manner, once Merebith steps in the tube she transforms into that person and can feel their feelings.  You can see how she tried to draw Merebith transforming into another person.  There was more to the story about how the information got stored and transmitted but I can't remember it all (e.g., the text that got cut off on the bottom right reads, "Idea Storage Tank").  The empathy machine is my favorite machine to date.  Don't you just love that Merebith steps into a literal shoe?!?

Conscience Visualized

For more than a year I've known about Merebith and "The guy who wears khaki pants."  Meredith has described her little girl Merebith as a seperate person but basically herself.  Admittedly, thoughts of schizophrenia entered my mind, but they never really took a foothold.  I wasn't putting my head in the sand about it--it just didn't seem to fit with what I saw.  Although Merebith has her own persona, it doesn't actually seem as though she is a voice telling Meredith what to do.

It came to me the other day that Merebith is just like Meredith's conscience in visual form.  I learned from Dr. Cheri Florance how her son, who at an early age was using a completely visual way of thinking (he had no verbal skills and was diagnosed as deaf and mute), didn't have that internal voice that most people have.  In her book, "Maverick Mind," Dr. Florance explains in detail how in order to read, one has to be able to pronounce things in his mind.  For example, would you be able to know the difference when reading "chef" and "chat" if you couldn't voice the words in your mind?  From this lesson, I learned to question the concept of the internal voice in relation to visual thinking.

So, the way I see it (pardon the pun) is that perhaps Meredith at an early age had such a strong visual brain that instead of developing that little voice, she developed more of a little person.  And perhaps as she learned to speak, the little voice developed in the form of the little person talking.  We'll never likely know how it developed and I'm simply speculating here.  But what I know today is that Merebith is the vehicle by which Meredith talks to herself.

Here's one example.  As kids do, Meredith did kind of a dumb thing.  A few days ago she had gotten herself a snack and put it in a small bowl.  When she was finished, apparently she was playing with the bowl, holding it on her mouth by sucking it.  Admit it, you probably did this before.  As with most things, however, Meredith did it to the extreme and ended up breaking blood vessels just below her bottom lip.  Now she has a bruise there that looks like she has a soul patch--it's just a lovely look on a young girl.

The point of the story is that I asked Meredith at some point during the day if she ever argues with Merebith and she said yes and that in fact, she's mad at Merebith because for the last three days she has been rolling on the floor laughing and pointing at Meredith's chin.  Can't you just picture that?  If you, yourself, gave yourself a big bruise on your chin, wouldn't you give yourself a hard time just like Merebith?