You know how parents sometimes say encouraging things that sort of ignore reality for a few seconds?  Like when I was a kid and dad was teaching me how to catch a baseball and it landed in my glove but only after it bounced off of my face and he said good job!, as if we were playing basketball and I was the backboard?   Well, listen close: what I’m about to say is true reality and has zero hyperbole.  My son was a better artist at 2 years old than I ever was or will be.  In years past he’d ask me to draw a robot to “show him how it’s done” and what I end up doing is my very best work, which inspired him toward greatness by doing the exact opposite of what I’ve drawn which, by the way, might be described as a disfigured rectangle of divergent borders infused by what appears to be squiggly lines of bacon.  But I did my best.   I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not a very good artist.  My mother was.  My son is.  Clearly the skipped generation I am.

I’m going to put up a picture that he tossed together last night before going to bed.  Occasionally we watch a carefully selected episode of The Simpsons, which I know George Bush disliked greatly but he recanted around in 1992 or so, and kudos to him because the show is now in its 27th season, which enables the next generation of parents like me show their children what a Cowabunga is and to explain why we don’t yet should be saying Aye Carumba all the time in our grown up conversations.  I guess what I’m trying to say here is that yes, I let my 10 year old watch some episodes of the Simpsons, though I use a lot of PG and we always skip past the Itchy and Scratchy stuff because I can’t watch that without suddenly losing the urge to not eat again for several hours, and I have a pretty strong stomach (3 kids strong).

So far, my premise is that Malachi is a good artist and that I’m genuinely amazed at his skill, not exaggerating even one iota when I say that he is a billion times better than me at drawing, and that he has seen some episodes of The Simpsons.  That being said, here’s his drawing: