"I just like to play with the blocks..."

8-year-old boy: No one here knows my birthday. We're very mysterious. It's a secret, and no one knows.

me: The office has everyone's birthday. I bet I could find it.

boy: No, you couldn't. We're always changing schools, staying secret. You don't even know how many schools! You don't even know where we live. I don't even live in my house. I sleep at the school, and no one knows.

me: You just climb into the attic and hide there all night? With the rats?

boy: No, I sleep right there, on that shelf, on top of the hand wipes.

me: So that's why your head always looks so clean and smells like Purell! Do just rub the hand wipes all over your body instead of take showers?

boy: Yup.

me: Do you clean your teeth with them too?

boy: No, I brush my teeth with the rats.

me: What do you do for dinner?

boy: I eat the rats too.

me: Mmm, rat kabobs.

boy: And I eat paper too.

me: Maybe you could wrap a rat up in paper and make a burrito.

boy: They think I get on the bus after school, but that's just my fake clone.

me: A decoy?

boy: He's a paper cut-out of me, and he goes to my home. He just goes into my room and doesn't come out.

me: Your parents don't realize it's just a paper cut-out? What happens at dinner time? Does he eat?

boy: Eat? What's a robot doing eating? A robot doesn't eat.

me: Oh, so now you have a robot clone?

boy: Yeah, I've always had one.

me: This all sounds very complicated. Why do you not want to go home? Why stay at the school? Do you just love school so much that you never want to leave?

boy: Nope.

me: Then why go through all this trouble?

boy: I just like to stay here and play with the blocks.