Lucy's Spleen

Google Doodles Puked on My Shoes

Spare me your canned answers, kids. Granted, the question suux, but come on! Your world revolves entirely around junk food and boy/girl cooties/relationships, and not at all around using Google "to search for the peace." Please don't expect me to buy your moralizing about ending racism and reversing global warming. The world will never be "full of magic and fairy tales." As a matter of fact just your mentioning that has caused the Chinese/Tibetans/Israelis/Palestinians/Rwandans/Anarcho-Syndicalists to communicate with one another using American Sign Language even less often than previously. And after all those rainbows and flowers there was not one mention of homosexuality in any of your spiffy little ideals; don't the teachers who put you up to this think that fags might want to live "in a world where prisons are empty and churches are full" too? I wonder if there were ever any doodling crusaders for controversial issues, or if- ahem- Google just filtered them out before putting the entries up for voting. Either way, I can't help but notice there's no Google Doodle entry about "what if there was a world with no female genital mutilation."

Anyway this whole exercise seemed so censored and disingenuous it wound up exasperating the hell out of me, so I went back to the K-3 age group to try to get fucking real already. Long live the weird science-y kid who thinks it would be cool/possible for humans to live underground someday! I voted for this:

"What if we live inside the Earth also in the future. It will give us a lot more room. We can have air vents for oxygen, tunnels for transportation, food storages, drinking water generators. We can use a lot of energy from the Earth's core."

Runner Up goes to the kid who believes that people will all be happier if they can just rock out the way they like to rock out:

"I think that the whole world would be happier if they rocked out to the music they love."

Living Under the Sea is not a bad idea, but loses due to a lack of specific ideas regarding means of execution and to major demerits for cheesedick rhyming.

 

Winner for grades 10-12 is the kid who wondered what if "we distorted our flesh to the extent that so little remained of what made us human that we became but a twisted, robotic caricature of our former selves." Now that's what I call a plausible adolescent fantasy. The rest is all bullshit.

To Santa from me, circa 1984-ish

Monsters: The Essentials

According to Joey, who is six:

• Monsters are everywhere.
• What they look like is they have two eyes poppin' out at you.
• A monster can eat a whole kid in one bite.
• If you meet a monster he will not walk up to you and say, "I'm a monster. Nice to meet you."
• If you meet a monster at the top of your stairs just turn on the lights.

I am an informed participant in NaBloPoMo.

Final Conclusion: Maiden & Sabbath= Both Awesome

I have four days left at work and am feeling pretty ready to move on to the great state of Unemployment at this point, but I have been experiencing a few tender feelings for things I will miss about working at the Youth Brigade, including (certain among) the kids and the always-entertaining things they say and do and produce. For example, this exemplary "compare and contrast" writing assignment by Remi; Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath Part tWo The rewrite [Final Draft], which I lovingly present for your enjoyment:

The essay reads:

"The two bands I chose to compare and contrast are both metal bands. Metal bands have heavy guitar parts and insane drum and bass parts. The first one was Black sabbath and the second one w Iron Maiden.

The way that Iron Maiden and Black sabbath are similar is they are both english bands. Another way is they both have great musicians like ozzy and Steve hairison.

The First way that black sabbath and Iron Maiden [are different] is maiden is still together and Sabbath is not. Also sabbath has ozzy and maiden does not. ozzy is the guy who bit a bats head off onstage.

In my conclusion both bands are awesome. The way that maiden is awesome is for their song the trooper and Sabbath is awesome for their song warpigs. That is why I chose those bands."

(P.S. This post is dedicated to Chris.)

The Rules

Stan's nieces and nephew slept over last weekend but we never saw them because we came home in the evening past their bedtime and they left in the morning before we got up, but we knew they were here because of all the damn noise the notes they left on our door in the morning* which consisted of an illustration of- something, and the message, "I WANT TO PLAY HIDE AND SEEK WITH STAN AND EMILY." Also because they had devised, printed and left behind for all to observe the following Rules of conduct:

• ALWAYS KISS THE CHILDREN
• ALWAYS CLEAN UP YOUR MESS
• BE GOOD
• DON'T PLAY IN THE FIRE
• DON'T MAKE LOUD NOISES WHEN PEOPLE ARE SLEEPING [Ahem.]
• TRY NOT TO SPILL
• ALWAYS BE NICE TO GRANDPA, GRANDMA, STAN AND EMILY

I have to say that while the sentiment is lovely, it is clear that what we have here is a case of Early-Onset Alice in Wonderland Complex in these children. They give themselves very good advice, but they seldom ever follow it.


* Yes, we know how fortunate we to have the aunt/uncle privilege of continuing to sleep after the kids are up. But rest assured, karma will catch up to us one of these days...

P.S. Stan's neice and nephew didn't really appreciate me singing it the entire time the three of us were doing the egg/dye bit of Easter together, but I vow that MY children will know every word to and participate in (annual, minimum) performances of The Egg Song, despite the song's lyrical bias favoring whiteness as a positive attribute. In fact, at Easter we'll modify the lyrics according to our liberal dye preferences. Our version will go, "Eggs! Get your eggs here. Fresh and MAUVE (teal, puce, marigold), eggs are here!"

Ah, poor future children. It will likely be a terrible burden on them, being so socially-conscientious while at the same time being so dork-tacular. I guess I should start putting away all the money I save by not getting therapy myself to pay the bill for theirs...

Children's Lit

Stan's step-nephew, Teddy, has been writing short, vividly illustrated children's books and lending them out to family members who vow rigorous adherence to the stringent return policy on all items checked out from his "library." These plotless softcovers are concise, poetic and feature highly creative spelling techniques and aphoristic titles such as FUN BOOK, ROOR (do in 16 day), and the evocative HUNT YOR JUNGL (do in 9 day), an urgent four-word action-adventure written entirely in the imperative tense and illustrated with gory images of snakes and dinosaurs bleeding from their mouths and from tidy black bullet hole dots on their fleshy bits. 

At the risk of losing my shirt in an epic copyright infringement lawsuit, I will reproduce one of Teddy's stories for you here.

ROOR!
(A funny book.)

Dinosuars sey ROOR
[Illustration of two round, hinged dinosaur heads- each with a single eye and nostril and many jagged teeth displayed in a menacing Pacman profile- clearly emitting the sound, "ROOR"]

bares say ROOR
[Illustration of a bear head, identical to the two Pacman dinosaur heads, also saying, "ROOR"]

snecks say ROOR
[The same head is depicted here, only this time with an additional bulbous feature suspended from the top lip of the snake- a stream of snot perhaps? Is it possible the snake has a cold? I'm hoping this is a fang, but it's difficult to say. I'll have to submit my query to the author by way of Grandma tomorrow. The snake is also saying, "ROOR."]

deer do not sey ROOR
[Here is an image of a little Asian smiley-face beetle with an A next to it. Knowing Teddy this means that the deer is not only not roaring, it is actually gently murmuring, "Ahhh."]

The end. It's a comedy! Get it?

First-Grade Humor

Last night Stan's seven year-old nephew called our house to talk to Grandma. He was proud of the hilarious joke he made up and couldn't wait to tell it to her.
This is the joke:

Hey Grandma, why do pigs have tits?
... Because they're tittyheads! [Hysterical laughter ensues]

On riding a zip line*

"It's like flying through the air, without hitting a rock."

- 6 year-old Juan Who Visits Me in my Office All the Time.

* This zip line

According to my sources

A conversation between a tutor and student at the Youth Brigade where I work. Marla is seven and is learning to read.

Tutor: OK, Marla, what vowel makes the sound "eh?"
Marla: (silent, hunts for the answer in her book)
Tutor: Marla?
Marla: (emerges from book as though she's just been preoccupied with some really good reading) SO. You were saying?
Tutor: What vowel makes the sound "eh?"
Marla (authoritatively now): Well, according to my BRAIN, it's E.