The other day while driving to preschool I asked Jakey what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, “Shark.”

I laughed.

I laughed for about a block and then said, “Really, a shark?”

“Yeah!”

“And I will eat. And I will go omp, omp, omp!”

His vigorous arm movements flashed in the rearview mirror each time he went omp!

Sometimes the honest answer is the most profound.

I don’t know if you can support a family as a shark, but I suspect they aren’t the family types anyway, not for long. I try to imagine the holidays when he’s older. Will he want to stay in his old room? Will his mom and I need to go to the ocean if we want to see him? What do you even get a shark as a present?

Every question merely brings more questions.

And I was the one who asked what he wanted to be in the first place.

I guess I should be glad he’s moved past his fear of sharks to embracing that inner shark instead.

Imagination is one of the best parts of being human.

Ice cream, too, I suppose…

But, imagination is pretty high up there. A few minutes listening to Jakey’s stories covers a lot of ground in time and space. He tells fantastical tales about a combination of preschool classmates and imaginary friends having adventures that are often vaguely derivative of things we had talked about recently: going shopping, a trip to the doctor, the cement mixers pouring cement on the new Sellwood Bridge deck, garbage trucks in the morning, or people doing yard work.

A friend made him a wooden crane for Christmas. Jakey has been craning up and down a rubber cow in the basket. Everything has a storyline. Not every storyline is clear.

He doesn’t fib very often, but his tales are so complex now that it’s hard to tell truth from unreality.

Usually fiction’s dead giveaway is when he or an imaginary friend gives birth or drives a car or a dump truck in his story. Short of these clues, unraveling the authentic from fantasy is a real puzzle.

By the time I make sense of one tall tale, an imaginary bear has lumbered through the room and destroyed something or a stuffed kitten has become a bridge over the train tracks and Thomas the Tank Engine is clickety-clacking underneath.

Deciphering his stories sometimes means unraveling where each component came from. Let me set this next one up for you.

Fact 1: Jakey has a Berenstain Bears story where Papa and Mama bear go away on a second honeymoon, leaving the kids behind at the grandparents before enjoying a week at a resort in the mountains.

Fact 2: I drink the occasional mocha and Jakey enjoys sharing my whipped cream. Whipped cream brings him a joy rivaled by few treats in this world.

Fact 3: Sometimes we stop at a drive-thru coffee stand over on Barbur Boulevard, so he’s seen me ordering and receiving coffee through my window from friendly women in small roadside wooden boxes.

Now that I’ve set the stage, here is his story hybrid. A few weeks ago we were playing upstairs and he went to his bedroom window and placed this order:

“Can I have a coffee mocha for the mountain lodge with whip cream, a lotta whip cream?”

He is truly my son.