Taken to Heart

Our family was watching TV and a person was talking about how he needed a heart transplant.  Meredith asked me if you are still the same person if you get an organ transplant.  I put two and two together and asked her, "Do you think you would lose all your feelings if you got a new heart?"  "Yes," she said, quite seriously.  There is that literal, pictorial mind again.  Sweet and sad at the same time that she wondered about that.  I was wondering how she pictured love residing in her heart.  Did she see literal pictures of feelings sitting in her heart like she sees Merebith in her brain?  I got the chance to ask her that yesterday and she thought about it for a minute and responded, "Mom, Merebith is only in my brain--she hasn't left Brainsburg [that's where Merebith lives and works] and gone other places in my body."

We had a lot of fun thinking about how Merebith could take some travels around Meredith's body.  Maybe she could jump in a gondola and travel around on the blood, visiting different organs.  But then Meredith said that every time she moved, Merebith would be tossed around against her body.  I guess this doesn't happen when Meredith is in her brain, because she isn't in Meredith's literal brain...she's really just in her mind. 

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?!?