The Sob Story Teller

When my 6 year old goes to sleep at night, one of us usually (but not always) pats her to sleep. When my wife was out of the country recently, I did that every night. Which is why I was so surprised when my wife told me this incident.

After my wife returned, my daughter sensed her “missed you” + guilty feeling. And once there is blood in the water, my daughter, like any kid, moved in like a shark for the kill, milking the guilt for all it was worth. One night while being put to bed, my daughter asked my wife to pat her saying, “While you were gone, I had to pat myself to sleep. And since I can’t pat myself on the back, I had to pat myself on the thigh instead”!!!

Whoa! Wait a minute, what had I been doing all those days, I thought. I am sure this isn’t the first (or last) time that she’ll be cooking up such stories. The more exaggerated they are, the more fun they are to concoct… and to hear. But I would still have loved to say and do what Calvin’s dad did in the strip below:
Unfortunately for me, my daughter wouldn’t know who Oliver Twist is…

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarJanuary 31, 2018 at 1:46 PM

    Ha ha!

    A highly welcome blog, which is brief. That reminds me of the Shakespearean wisdom, "Brevity is the soul of wit". Shakespeare had to audacity to place this sentence in a long train of sentences by some bla bla Polonius (I think), who cared little for brevity. :-) He pulled it off so easily, only because because Shakespeare was adept in the art of oxymoron too!

    With your sentence, "And once there is blood in the water, my daughter, like any kid, moved in like a shark for the kill, milking the guilt for all it was worth", it is shown that the blog writer has learnt the trick that Watterson dispersed in his magnum opus, the Calvin and Hobbs! If such kind of exaggerated and brutal-like literary expression is not chosen, there is every chance that humor and lightness of the situation would refuse to pop up in the same way!

    Thanks for making me enjoy the Calvin Hobbs all over again. Fortunately I know Oliver Twist and the evergreen idiom in English in his name! With your context juxtaposed, I also realize how well Watterson had placed himself in your shoes, probably at a time when you did'e even have any shoes! :-)

    Shakespeare may not live forever; but the aspiration towards Shakespeare's uncanny ability for expressing everything, with so little trace of projecting his own personality into the words, goes on forever.

    We want more Aditi blogs! And then some more of it!!

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