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Multimedia: An interview with Ethan Caldwell
By Amanda Caldwell | I find my brother Ethan, 12, lumbering after the family cat with his arms stretched out in front of him, saying, "Don't look at me like I'm Frankenstein. Give me a hug." Kit in all his glorious black poundage sidles away, and Ethan settles down into the beige couch in front of the Nintendo, the afternoon sunlight through the wooden-slatted window behind him glinting off his light brown hair. He grins at me despite the unfamiliar interview situation. The cat has returned and is purring loudly, balancing his bulk on the back of the couch as Ethan pets him.
"Ethan, what cat do you like the best?" he supplies in a deep reporter voice, so I throw the question out to him.
"Kit," he answers.
When I ask what Kit's finer qualities are, Ethan has his answers ready: "Fatness, stupidness, and frightenedness." The cat jumps onto the ledge in front of the window, narrowly missing crashing into the half-dozen plants nesting there.
Name: Ethan Caldwell
Born: July 5, 1985, Aurora, Colorado
Height: 5'2"
Year in school: 7th grade, "for 16 more days; no, 15."
A not-so-favorite teacher: Mr. Dotolo, for computer. "Maybe that's two 'l's. Or four 'o's. Or 15 't's. I forget. I don't really like him anyway. I left my disk in the computer because we had to leave quickly, and he made me write, 'I will make sure I put my disk away' 50 times. When I turn it in, I'm going to say, 'Thank you; that strengthened my arm.'"
Grades: usually A-range, except for an unexplainable B+ in Band.
Favorite color: forest green
Future career: mechanical design engineer. "They draw vehicles, make blueprints, and put the blueprints into action." He sings the last word and dances in his seat. "I have to dance when I say 'action.'" He does it three more times.
Current projects: the illustrated series The Adventures of Captain Bob. He's at work on the first volume, "Space Pirates," a thrilling and comedy-enhanced saga of action in space. He's up to Chapter 8, page 10, he says with a laugh. "Maybe I should just title each page: 'Page 1.'" I suggest, "Page 2: The Adventure Continues." "Page 3," he says, "Continuation of the 2nd Page."
"No," I say.
I tell him he can talk at slug speed. "Yes ... I ... will ... talk ... at ... slug ... speed," he intones. Then he muses at the term: "Isn't 'slug speed' an oxymoron?"
Ethan has the Goldeneye Nintendo game. He likes when I come home because he gets to triumph over me mercilessly. For more than one player, the object of the game is to scoot around various settings, looking for people to shoot. The player who kills the most wins. It sounds a little gruesome, but it is fun.
I ask him if he's ever played anyone better than he is.
"Not really. Well, Kenny's very dangerous with a laser. He backs into a corner, firing his laser gun, and you can't get near him. ... And Kenny always chooses the short man [as his character], and it's hard to aim down to kill him. Of course, the bad thing about being a short guy is if you do get shot, it's in the head."
We talk about the video-arcade James Bond games for a little bit, too -- "Whenever you shoot someone, the guy's body bounces and is like 'Wrah!' I pounded six shots into one guy, and he was like 'Wrah! Wrah! Wrah!' Then he finally fell down, because I ran out of ammo."
He moves into describing WarCraft II and quickly gets wrapped up in his explanation of the story line. In the first WarCraft, Orcs came to earth through a portal opened by a crazy magician guy and tried to take over the humans' land. The humans fought back. Now, in the sequel, the humans have been beaten and are retreating to other lands, the Orcs following behind again.
The players can choose to be either Orc or human again. If you're Orc, you conquer lands again. If you're human, you repel the invasion again. "Is that too many 'again's?" he asks. I suppose that's the nature of a sequel.
I see Ethan playing WarCraft II regularly in the afternoons over the modem with our 10-year-old cousin, Russell. There's a little chat room at the beginning to discuss the game options and type in your name, and Ethan has learned that it can be distracting to use a fake one.
"Sometimes I use 'Aardvark.' Russell thought it was spelled wrong. He said it had only one 'a' at the beginning. He said, 'I'll ask my mom -- she's a walking human dictionary."
Ethan seems amused that my pen is still moving. "Did you get that part?" he asks. He starts quoting my projected article: "WarCraft II is a complex blend of ... oh, yes, and Russell's mom is a walking human dictionary."
WarCraft II, he says, is more violent than Goldeneye, but the graphics aren't as realistic. "It's rated Teen, and so is Goldeneye, but I don't know why," he says.
I'm familiar with MPAA ratings, but I've never heard the Nintendo ones, so Ethan explains. E is for everyone; T is for teens, 13 and up; M is mature, 17 and up. He said in the Mature games, you flick someone and blood spatters across the screen.
"In my newest Nintendo Power, they compared the new Mortal Kombat games with the old Mortal Kombat games, and for Mortal Kombat IV, under blood, it said, 'Buckets.'"
He breaks off. "I have to get a drink. I'm a thirsty wirsty boy." He starts singing this refrain as he marches off to pour himself a Coke. He notices I'm writing it down and groans. "You're not writing that down, too, are you? Oh, no."
I ask him how you spell "wirsty." "You think I care how it's spelled?" he says. "I just rhyme things."
Then he has an interviewee brainstorm. "I know -- I could get a thing of Pringles and eat them, and after every word, you'd have to write 'crunch, crunch, crunch.'"
I write this down, too, bending over in vain to hide my notes. "Oh, no," Ethan says as he leans way over my shoulder. "You're writing down everything I say, huh? I thought I was safe. If you'd had a tape recorder, I wouldn't be saying these things."
We decide to wrap up the interview so he can do homework and I can type this up. I ask Ethan, pretending it's something I ask everyone I interview for this magazine, "Is there anything special you'd like to tell our readers?"
"Yeah, I know something you can tell them: No animals were harmed in the making of this interview." He stops and considers this. "Well, we hurt Kit's feelings, but that doesn't count."
Kit leaves, and Ethan turns his attention to the matter at hand. "Do you want me to talk really fast?" he asks.
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