Skip to main content

Flying Spaghetti Scare

J doodles all the time and is partial towards bright colors like many kids. Many masterpieces adorn the fridge door, some have been scanned and posted online for the edification of the grandparents.

Lately my little Claude Monet has been scribbling on something that looks ominously close to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

At first I did not pay too much attention but the frequency of its appearance on scraps of paper around our household made me take a second look and ask a few questions.

I was very close to accosting Miss A at her daycare to see if she was on a covert proselytizing mission for the FSM church. I figured being in full possession of the facts would be in order before any such step.

"J, what is it you are drawing ?" I asked her casually one morning as she was churning out yet another of those FSMs on construction paper.

"It is a dump truck" she claimed.

"Really ? It does not look like a dump truck at all." I protested. Now, J is not the one to call a spade a spade when it comes to art. The abstract can be interpreted variously. A kitty cat can become a tree with a rainbow on top very quickly. But to see a dump truck in this noodly thing was clearly pushing the envelope.

"Now it does" she said with some determination as she drew four hasty circles at the end of the appendages of the FSM.

"I never saw a dump truck like that in my life" I insisted with some indignation.

"I'm pretending it's a dump truck" J said admiring her art work from what seemed like an aesthetic distance.

"What are these things ?" I pointed to the many tentacles that emanated from the central figure

"Those are hands reaching for the sun" she says solemnly.

I know by now that it will be futile to enquire how a dump truck came upon hands and why they should be reaching for the sun (interesting turn of phrase in the context of my earlier suspicions)

I don't believe I have the skinny of the FSM look-alike that J is doodling these days. Whatever it is, I hope she is on to something new soon. I don't have a good feeling about this one at all.

Labels:

Comments

Reshmi said…
heyy... this brings back some long forgotten memory from my childhood!
i used to scribble something very similar to the FSM for a while before i started school.
but much to my parents frustration since it was all displayed on the walls of our rented home! :)))

altho i am happy my mom never asked me what it was! i am dead sure i had no explanation :P :))
10:36 AM
Anonymous said…
just dropped by to say hi. Nice blog. You are pushing her imagination with your questions. ;)
1:37 PM
Heartcrossings said…
Hey Bleu! Long time no see. Thanks for stopping by.
2:38 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more