Backwords

For the love of all that is holy, can’t a guy go a few days without people (or the voices in my head... Hard to say what’s real anymore what with all the drinkin’ and all) clamoring for a new blog post?!  What are you, the Blog Update Enforcer Pursuivant, or something?

What, “pursuivant”? Hey, it’s my English degree, I will do with it what I please.  Ok, it isn’t as much of an English degree as it is a Word-of-the-Day calendar.  Ok, fine, it was a Blackadder episode. Happy?!

Speaking of words...  In the upper left corner of this blog is a snippet of a drawing the four-year-old did at school today.  It says “Hulk Smash”. 

What?  Yes, we watched “The Avengers” together... I also taught him the “Stop Copying Me” game recently and let him listen to “Jingle Snake” enough times to where I was sure he had it down well enough for him to teach his friends at school, so what of it?!

Anyway...  Note he is not 100% constrained (yet) by society’s rules that English is typically written left to right, up to down.

That belief is further showcased with another drawing from today:  

Start above the stencil-tracing of the gingerbread man. That’s the word “you”.  He knows that there is a “yuh” sound in there and that’s sometimes what the letter “u” sounds like.  He also knows there is an “o” in there, but is not sure where or why.  

Then read, left to right, the sentence above that.  Then, get a mirror, and read the last sentence.

Throwing it all together, you can probably deduce that the whole thing says “You can’t catch me, I am the Gingerbread Man”.  

This is typical of the stuff he is creating lately. But it is also extremely mentally taxing for the audience.  Sort of like being forced to do a cryptogram without a pencil... and at gunpoint.
  

The hilarious part here is the look he gets when you are reading what he writes. He filled with pride and expectant glee yet is totally confused as to why it is taking you so damn long to puzzle out his flawless narrative.  

Oh, mind you, he is appreciative - to a ridiculous degree - of the accolades once you (finally) finish, but you definitely get a sense he is thinking “What took you so long... moron?” while you are telling him how proud you are of his efforts.