The audience has spoken, and the winner–by a landslide–of the title of the new column on fiction, fandom, and family is:

Slice of Light

The new Slice of Light column, God willing, will debut in two weeks. Next week, we will announce our other new column.

Meanwhile, I leave you with a tiny slice of light:

Once upon a time, our family headed up to northern New York to visit relatives. There were many of us, so the wise relatives put us up in a hotel. The hotel had a pool. Before I decked four-year-old Juss out in his float-swimsuit, I sent him to use the hotel bathroom.

A little while later, he came running out and the following conversation ensued:

Juss: “Mommy, I just used the coolest, most awesome potty ever!”

Mommy: “oh?”

Juss: “It flushed by itself!”

Mommy, leaning over to help him into his bathing suit, says jokingly. “Do you think it was fairies?”

Juss, with absolute intensity, replies in the affirmative, “Oh! I think!”

He then pauses before adding: “But not all potties have fairies.”

Then, there’s a moment of quiet as we continue dressing. Then:

Juss: “Or maybe it was God.”

At this point, I lost it. I burst out laughing and brought him in to see how the toilet mechanism worked. I couldn’t have my son believing that toilets were flushed by fairies…or God.

I didn’t want to be responsible for causing a whole new kind of blasphemy.

See you in two weeks!