Weekly Short Story: Child of All Ages by P.J. Plauger

When I read P.J. Plauger's 1975 science fiction short story Child of All Ages (appearing in the anthology Donald Wollheim Presents The 1976 Annual World's Best SF (DAW Books), it quickly reminded me of an early Twilight Zone episode from 1960 titled Long Live Walter Jameson, featuring a history teacher with a big secret: he is immortal.  The little girl Melissa in Plauger's tale has the same secret, but although he may have derived some inspiration from the TV show, Plauger nevertheless did a very masterful job of handling the subject...

Supposedly fourteen...although she looks much younger...little Michelle keeps getting into trouble at school.  Finally, after sharply disagreeing with her history teacher about the Industrial Revolution in England and how children were treated back then, she finds herself interviewed by a school counselor, Meg Foster.  After telling her of her true age (2,400 years) and that her father was a wizard who had shown her how to stay a child and not age, Meg invites her to dinner along with her husband, a history professor and his aging father, a biochemist.  After her made-up story of living with someone else unravels, Michelle persuades these good people to take her in as their "daughter"...and yes, they believe her story.  What makes Child of All Ages work for me is how Michelle's thought processes have developed over the ages to the point where she can predict with a fair degree of accuracy when her relationships with others start to deteriorate, usually after just a few years, and she finds herself compelled to "move on"...

I could go into more detail about my reactions from this significant story, but that would entail revealing more than I am willing, since I encourage you to first read it for yourself.  But I will repeat something I wrote about many years ago on this blog: if you or I possessed some special ability, seemingly magical in nature, that no one else had and it gave us a marked advantage in our lives over others, then the very last thing we would want to do would be to share that ability.  For doing so would put us in grave danger as eventually the governing authorities would at the very least deprive of our freedom and at the worst seek to destroy us.  That's why I have to chuckle when I see someone openly claiming to have special powers like reading others' minds, telekinesis, and the like: were they for real, you wouldn't be hearing from them very long...