The Globe Project

Madison made her way clumsily from the garage towards the kitchen, her arms full of old newspapers, paint, and a dusty dodgeball.

“Dad, would it be okay for me to use this stuff for a school project?” She asked her father, Curtis, who was enjoying his morning coffee at the table.

“Let me see what you’ve got there,” he said.

Madison unloaded the junk on the kitchen table and Curtis put down his coffee to rifle through it. “Holy moly,” he mumbled. “These newspapers are old, eh? I guess we won’t have any use for them kiddo. You can go ahead and do your assignment with this stuff. What are you working on anyway?”

“Uh,” Madison hesitated. “Just some boring social studies thing Dad, don’t worry about it.”

“Come on, nothing you do is too boring for your old man. What’s it, a collage of world news or something? I can hardly remember grade seven social studies.”

“No, it’s, we’re—” Madison started to collect the materials off the table, assessing her father’s curious expression. Nervously, she said, “We’re making globes out of found objects. It’s for a unit about climate change.”

Curtis’ face flushed. He pushed his coffee away from himself and then scooted his chair away from the table. He stood up, walked dramatically towards the window, and turned around with his hand over his mouth.

“Dad, it’s not a big de—” Madison started to say before her dad interjected.

“No. I’m trying to keep my cool but don’t tell me it’s not a big deal Maddy.” He looked down the hallway and bellowed, “Jill! you’ve gotta come in here!”

Madison made for the door, hopeful she might end this uncomfortable interaction. Again, her dad stopped her.

“Maddy, now I’m not upset with you but we’re not done here. Let’s go over this with your mom, alright?”

With a sigh, Madison dropped her supplies. She wished she hadn’t struck up a conversation with her dad. Why hadn’t she just gotten straight to work? No one would have even noticed anything out of place.

Madison’s mom rushed into the kitchen, clasping the Sunday paper. “What is it, Curt?” She said, flustered. “I was in the middle of the Sunday Sun.” Jill glanced at the table’s contents and then at Madison’s look of discomfort.

“You see all this stuff?” Curtis said, gesturing at the dusty heap. “Maddy dug it out of the garage to work on a project. She’s supposed to make a globe out of this stuff—a globe!”

“Oh, good grief,” Jill said.

“I know! And on top of that, it’s for a project about climate change. Can you believe that, Jill? Can you believe they’re still putting these crazy ideas in kids’ heads?”

Madison suppressed every urge to roll her eyes. Her dad was in a tizzy already. The last thing she wanted to do was make matters worse.

Jill went to Madison’s side and put an arm around her. She wanted to make sure Maddy didn’t feel at fault for the heated emotions. She turned to her daughter and looked her in the eyes with all of her motherly compassion and said, “Now sugar, we know you’re just doing your assignment and Dad and I are so proud of you for being such a good student; but you’ve already learned the Earth is flat, right honey? You understand that?”

Madison’s stomach turned. Her parents had been active in flat Earth activism her whole life. They were also climate change deniers. And though they had made sure she knew that family allegiance meant accepting the Earth as flat and global warming as a natural phenomenon, she had been changing her mind little by little since somewhere around grade two.

“I get it, Mom, yeah,” Madison managed to say. “But what am I supposed to do? It’s my homework. I have to do it.”

“See, Jill? Public school is no place for our kid. Look at what’s happening now,” Curtis said in a raised voice.

“Curt, public school is our only option. We can’t afford to home school her,” Jill reasoned. “In any case, maybe this is an opportunity, right?”

“What do you mean?” Curt prodded.

“I mean, it’s been a while since we got organized,” Jill replied.

“Jill, you’re a genius!” Curtis’ demeanour cooled. He kissed Jill on the cheek and gave Madison’s arm a loving squeeze.

“Alright, so here’s what’s going to happen,” Jill said. “You and me, we’re going to get started on your project okay Maddy?”

Madison nodded and kept her feelings of defeat as far from her face as she could.

“And Curt, you’re going to call the gang and arrange for a demonstration,” Jill instructed.

“That sounds like a plan I can get on board with,” Curtis beamed. “When’s this thing due, Maddy?”

“Tomorrow,” Madison replied.

“Alright,” Curtis said, his mood shifting to an enthusiasm that made Madison viscerally uncomfortable. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

Jill neatly folded her newspaper as Curtis rushed to his laptop in the living room. He quickly got to sending messages to his various flat Earth communities online and, before long, Madison could hear him laughing on the phone with some of his contacts. He genuinely thought it was farcical that schools taught children of spherical planets. Madison, on the other hand, developed a headache when trying to imagine a pizza-pie Earth orbiting around an omelette sun. It didn’t add up.

Jill rifled through Madison’s art corner in the basement and found some blue Bristol board. “That’s perfect,” She said. “Don’t you think this will do a lot better than that old dodgeball for your planet?”

Madison shrugged. Her mom spread the Bristol board out and sharpened a pencil.

“First, we trace the shape of the Earth and its continents. Then you can colour it all in with that paint you found in the garage,” Jill said. “Why don’t I do the shape of the world and Antarctica and then you can go ahead draw the rest?”

Madison fidgeted with her shirt sleeves as she watched Jill draw a circle on the poster paper, followed by a ring near the outer edge. “Antarctica!” She said as she closed the loop. She and her flat Earth friends thought the Earth was a disk, with Antarctica bordering the whole planet.

Don’t you think it’s kind of funny that it’s shaped that way?” Madison asked.

“What do you mean?” Jill quizzed, lifting her eyes from what she was doing.

“I mean, it’s a circle, right? It’s based on the globe. Why not a rectangle or a rhombus?”

Jill shot a sharp glance at Madison. “You’ve got it twisted Maddy. This is exactly why your dad is working so hard up there. The globe was based on the shape of our flat Earth, not the other way around.”

“Okay,” Madison said. She decided to leave it at that and for the rest of the afternoon, she worked quietly alongside her mom. They cut out the shape of the Earth and Madison created raised continents out of papier-mâché. She coloured them in with green and white paint and was almost happy with the result. If only the assignment hadn’t required her to make a globe.

She left it to dry and went on with her Sunday, doing her best to avoid her parents until dinner. When they sat down to eat, she thanked her mom for helping with her assignment and said she liked how it turned out.

“That’s great,” Curtis said. “You’re going to have an entourage supporting you tomorrow, honey. We’re showing up at your school with your project and we’re going to protest and demand they accept it. We’ve got a whole crowd in on this; another kid from your class, even. You’ll get to see what a difference you can make when you trust in common sense and stand up for what’s right.”

“Okay,” Madison said, resigned. “Can I be excused, please?”

“You sure can,” Jill said. “Great work today.”

Madison collected her project from the basement and brought it up to her room. She stared at it for a little while and then rolled it together, folding the ends into each other.

“A globe,” she whispered to herself as she analyzed the shape. “Sort of.”

She unfolded it and tossed her school supplies in her bag, along with a roll of blue gaffer tape she’d found in the basement. She went to bed feeling nervous about what the new day would bring.

The next morning, Madison awoke to a house filled with chatter. She came out of her bedroom to find nearly 20 people gathered in her living room with a collection of signs. Slogans included:

Sorry to burst your bubble but the Earth is flat!

It’s time to flatten the round Earth conspiracy!

Climate change = fake news

Jill was serving coffee and Curtis was pumping up the crowd for the protest at the schoolyard.

“We’re going to let these teachers know we won’t let them fill our kids’ heads with the government’s lies!” Curtis projected to a cheer. He gestured to Madison and continued, “My daughter deserves a better education than I got—she deserves the truth!” Again, his friends clapped and whooped in agreement. “Alright, let’s do this,” Curtis said.

As the crowd made its way out, Madison caught the eyes of her classmate, Ben. He scowled at her and she mouthed to him, “I’m sorry.”

It was a short march to Green Point Elementary, the school Madison had attended since kindergarten. It was a small, charming building with a playground that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean. Though it could be quite windy, Madison had always enjoyed spending recesses and lunch breaks by the water. She worried for a moment that her parents’ mortifying activism might get her expelled. Even if it didn’t, she wasn’t sure she would ever want to be seen at school again after today.

The protestors piled into the school grounds and Curtis lifted his megaphone to start leading chants, “I don’t know but I’ve been told…”

His associates echoed, “I don’t know but I’ve been told…”

“The round Earth lie is getting old,” he finished.

“The round Earth lie is getting old!”

Madison’s teachers started to flood out of the school, to see what the commotion was all about. Their expressions ranged from appalled to amused and Madison’s discomfort ballooned. The staff members all knew her parents. There was no denying her connection to this chaos. Still, she slipped away from the front of the crowd that was facing the school and made her way to the back, in the hopes of hiding from view. She found Ben there, executing the same strategy.

Ben frowned and looked at Madison, “It’s not your fault,” he said. “I know that. Did you finish your project?”

“My mom helped me,” Madison said, waving her poster, which was rolled into a tube shape and held together with an elastic band. “It’s flat but I figured out how to make it into a globe. I’m going to do that in class. Did you?”

Ben swung his knapsack around and unzipped it. “I made it out of LEGO after bedtime,” he said of the blue and green orb inside. “My parents didn’t want me to make anything. They said it was part of the protest.”

The two kids shared a knowing look for a moment. Then Ben swung his knapsack back over his shoulder and they both gazed out to the ocean. The crashing waves gave them something to focus on besides the sound of the chanting adults. As they peered out on the water, they saw a far-off tall ship, sailing southeast. They took comfort in watching the vessel disappear over the horizon, demonstrating the curvature of the Earth.

Thank you for reading. Please tip your writer on the way out and have a great day.