Thoughts about the end of things

We were headed to swim lessons and my son said to me, "Mom, what if the sun exploded but somehow didn't blow up the whole earth and we didn't have a sun anymore? It would be winter all the time and maybe it would snow."

I had no answer to this, which was fine, because he continued. "Maybe the sun would reform from its own gasses and we would get a sun again but it would take billions of years."

At that moment, I couldn't decide if that was the more interesting end-of-the-world scenario or if the one he told me earlier in the day about a real zombie invasion and us having to live our lives in bunkers was.

I am thankful for my son's active imagination, but I do wonder what the root cause is for the uptick in his survival-of-our-family fantasies. I let him have his fun, because the truth can be much scarier. For example: Life expectancy in the U.S. just dropped. It wasn't the significance of the age dropping that bummed me out, it was that it dropped because of an increase in deaths that are preventable.

That all reminds me that it is my job to teach my son about how important health is. After all, he will need to be in top shape to outrun our alien overlords, which my son assures me could happen any day now.

Would you want to know how it all ends? Tell me in the comments.