You're Just Not Thinking Fourth Dimensionally

Let’s see... I haven’t put up anything on The Fridge in a while.  Let’s dig through the archives and see what we can find.  Ah... December 7, 2011.  This will work.

This is the three-year-old's first attempt at unsolicited writing something other than his name.  At the top on the right is his name, and on the left he claims it says Best Daddy.  I get the “B”and the “E”.  The "S" is a huge stretch but since he often draws "N"s and "Z"s and "2"s and "5"s at odd angles (like the "N" in his name), I suppose I can give him a pass. The "T" might have started off as a "T" and then got morphed into an "H", but the rest just looks like Woodstock is telling off Snoopy or something.  

Lazy, lazy child.  No focus, I tell you.

You might be wondering about the composition.  

I have learned that when he (and many children, I suppose) draw something, they don't limit themselves to drawing a scene frozen in time like you or I would.  They are drawing that scene and all of the stuff that happened before and after the main event.  Also, they draw stuff that they are reminded of while they are in the process of making the main scene.

If an adult created in this manner, you would call in a prescription for Thorazine.   But this isn't crazy. The little ones are working with all the tools they know how to use and they are trying to tell a story, not just "draw something". This makes a lot of their artwork look like someone took two or three random View-Master disks, crammed them into the slot, then had only a couple of minutes to reproduce what they saw.

Their works of art are less like snapshots and more like totem poles, really. If you know what to look for (it takes practice and asking the exact right questions without leading the narrative) you can sometimes get the whole story.  Just don't wait too long asking the questions - that free-form stuff doesn't stay in long-term memory so you end up getting a lot of I-dunno-your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine shoulder shrugging.

So, instead of just assuming that this was a happy, stumpy free-fall potato worshiping a piece of toast that miraculously bears the visage of our Lord and Savior - the noo-nee-noo-nee-noo typewriter guy from old-school Sesame Street - I know better.  That's the boy on the left and that's me on the right.  That's what I would look like if I were dressed up like the main robot from WALL-E  then became trapped in a hay bale.  The little triangle thing in the middle is a monster fish, he says.  After that fish swam up, we all went to jail.

See.  Not crazy at all.