SAGE ADVICE: Planet planner

By MARK SAGE

Thanks a lot scientists of the year 2006.
Before you rode in on Rocinante, penning some new definition of the word “planet,” life was easy. Back then there were nine planets. Even if we didn’t exactly, precisely and for sure and certain know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what we all meant when we said planet, we knew there were nine of them. Now we aren’t so sure. Worse, we don’t know what to say when our 6-year-old sons ask if there are eight planets in the solar system. We hiccup, get that deer-in-headlights look and launch into tales of how when there were nine planets we all walked to school uphill and learned by whale blubber lamps how to spell the word “planet,” yet never, much to our consternation, knew exactly, precisely, for sure and certain what it meant.
“Are there eight planets?” my eldest asked Wednesday as we climbed into the car bound for school.
I hiccupped, breathed deeply and said, “Yes, yes there are eight planets.”
I had decided, using the fatherly wisdom that comes after you’ve explained over and over why it isn’t feasible, advisable or recommendable that you pierce a bunny’s ears, to leave out the whale blubber, the word “consternation” and any mention of Mickey Mouse’s dog.
Unfortunately, my son’s schoolmates had already beat me to it – that last part at least.
So and so told him there were nine, and so and so it seems is something of a planet savant.
“When daddy was a boy,” I told my son, “there were nine planets.”
Back when I was explaining that bunnies wouldn’t necessarily thing earrings were a glamorous accessory they didn’t tell me about the planet Catch-22.
“So there are nine planets?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “There are eight. Now.”
So and so told him that Pluto was the smallest planet. He’d read it in a book.
“Well, obviously so and so is reading a book published before the Aug. 24, 2006, ruling by the International Astronomical Union that downgraded Pluto, or as I like to call it 134340,” I said.
OK I didn’t say that. I didn’t even know all that until I looked it up on Wikipedia, ABC News Online and USA Today. Instead I said, “A couple years ago they decided Pluto wasn’t a planet at all.”
I would have been better off going with the first option.
Why did they decide that, he wanted to know.
Of course, I didn’t know. They just did. The bunny ear part of me said, “Yes, tell him that.” But I didn’t. I don’t always listen to the bunny ear part of me.
“It was too small.”
“Did it used to be bigger?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think so.”
I was happy for a moment. I’d answered to the best of my ability and he’d accepted, judging from his silence, that that was just the way things were. Then came the part that spun my head.
“What if they decide that earth isn’t a planet anymore?” he asked.
And there I was, with even less ability to answer that question than the one about how many planets there are in the solar system.
“Well, Pluto is still there, it’s just not considered a planet anymore,” I said.
“What is it then?” he asked.
“It’s Mickey Mouse’s dog,” I said.
“What’s Goofy?”
“Let’s get back to the planets.”