No, this isn’t a badly plagiarised Roald Dahl book but rather the infernal invention of one of the boy’s classmates.
The boy is somewhat gullible at times, and coupled with a vivid imagination and love of all things “super”, whether of the “hero” or “natural” bent, this can cause trouble at times. And this is one of those times.
George, the little darling, has told the boy that his parents are both scientists. Unfortunately he has managed to imbue scientists with all the sort of mysticism that only a 5 year old can, so the end result is sort of a lab coat wearing Dumbledore, with powers beyond the ken of man. You see, George’s parents apparently have developed a magical mixture that can turn them into ghosts without actually having to die first. There has obviously been some discussion amongst the five year olds over this because I was sagely told that when I took the magical mixture, I’d have to take my glasses off or my head would be visible. Furthermore, as an accountant I was officially in a “poo poo boring accountant job”, rather than anything exciting like, for example, a scientist. Fortunately I have the patience of a saint (Saint Monica, if you ever wondered which one), and was just about able to deal with the enthusiasm after a long day at work.
I’ve not seen the boy this fixated about something for a very long time. Between getting home at 6pm and bed at 7.30pm (for the kids, not me) last night, all I heard about was the magical mixture and questions about when we were going to go round Georges house to get it. The boy doesn’t know where George lives, other than on our estate, so he proposed we went round to every single house until we found Georges. George had also told him that Fifi had to be left behind, so I was constantly asked what hour we could leave because we had to make sure Fifi was asleep.
Suffice to say, if he applied himself to his school work with this single mindedness, he’d be about to graduate from Oxford University at this point in his young life.