When I was a kid I wanted to be a Scientist

just like Dr Phibes.

Phibes had a great lab, he was a musician and his ‘experiments’ seemed to astound and amaze everyone in the most dramatic fashion.

As a weedy little kid whose best friends were a crippled kid with braces on her legs a hearing aid in each ear and massively thick eye glasses and who I was  absolutely convinced was a Science Experiment project gone PERFECT  and another kid who uses to sit in my cherry tree with me and plan ” death defining tricks ” that involved our radio flyer wagons, yellow Tonka dump trucks big enough for us to ride in and Highway 99 at the bottom of street- you know, Phibes just appealed to me in a very big way.

Of course, at the end of the day my interest in Phibes and Science and those Vincent Price mad scientist kits fully prepared me for the job I had in a Funeral Home.

I should also mention that one of my favorite tv shows is

” Say Yes To The Dress.”

That’s a show about women looking for the perfect wedding dress.

Yes.

I am serious.

All I can add to this post is this thought-

it might  be a really good idea to monitor what your kids watch on tv.

You wouldn’t want them to turn out non traditional or weird or scary or strange.

Would you?

Years and years ago- when he was about eight years old,  the second born in my family got mad at me for taking away his Nintendo.

To show me how evil I was and how I had destroyed his life- he drew a picture of a cemetery and wrote his name on every single tombstone. I was impressed because there were a couple of dozen of those things and they were all different styles. It was obvious the kid had put a lot of work into that picture.

In fact I know exactly how much work he put into it because he drew it on the while sitting in the kitchen floor when I was making dinner and I was stepping over his emotionally distraught form every time I turned around.

That aside the entire picture was cool, it was detailed there were twisted black trees, zombies, coffins and a full Moon with teeth.

There may have been a Nintendo hanging from its mouth.

Oh and it had the same color hair as me.

It was also wearing a witch’s hat.

Anyway.

I liked it so much I put it in a frame and showed it too my friends.

One day my kid came home from school and caught me showing off his artwork.

He pulled the framed picture out of my hand, stomped his little foot and said, ” I hate you.  AND you’re stupid.”

Until today I thought that little picture was the funniest slapdown any kid had ever put on paper and shoved under a parent’s bedroom door- and then I found this on the interwebs:

(pic from Passive Aggressive Notes. Com)