Meet Polyphemus, named after the cyclops son of Poseidon, who was blinded by Odysseus. Our Polyphemus is based on a drawing four year old Moon made back when he was obsessed with all kinds of clopses.
It began here, under Seattle's Fremont Bridge. Do you see the troll that lives under it? It's a huge thing, with a real VW bug in its left hand, and a hubcap for its eye.
This troll played the role of Polyphemus in a movie we made of The Odyssey at my old school nine years ago. It was twenty some minutes long, 100 children, teachers, and the school dog as Scyllia. The result was something like those old Godzilla movies, but we had so much fun making it. In the end we were able to watch it in a real movie theater, and were thrilled to see ourselves on the Big Screen and watch our names roll by in the credits.
Back to Polyphemus and the Troll . . . While filming his scene, I hid behind the Troll's head and bellowed out his lines in a big growly voice (which I'm pretty good at, if I do say so). During the screening of the film, little Moon (who wasn't a student at the school, yet), was terrified of the Cyclops, especially the scary voice. Later I showed him that it was only me, and we drove to the Troll to prove it wasn't really alive.
This was the beginning of the "Clopses" phase in our world. He drew Cyclopses and Triclopses, and informed everyone that they were Biclopses. He had worked through his fear of the Cyclops, or so we thought . . .
A few months later, we gave him a picture book of Seattle landmarks, including the Fremont Troll. He slammed the book shut when he got to its page, but insisted on sleeping with the book next to him, only to wake up screaming, "Get it away!" in the middle of the night.
Maybe he'll make a movie someday, "My Mama was a Monster".
