10 November 2007

Collaboration


My little girl is learning that if you want something in this life, you gotta reach out & grab it. This photo is a direct result. I was trying to take a photo when she reached out her little paw and snatched the camera away at the last second. I pushed the button and clicked the shutter. I suppose you could call this our first artistic collaboration. Make of it what you will.

When I was a very little boy, I reached out and slapped an elderly woman, completely out of the blue. It was in the middle of a church service, too, which heightened the surrealism of the whole thing. I do not remember the look of shock and horror on her face. And I was too young for morality or consequences. I probably just thought it was some kind of game. I just reached right out and clocked her. No one knows why.

My family often reminds me of the fact that I once surprised everyone by slapping an elderly woman in church. It's part of our family lore. I guess it was a pretty big deal to my parents, who were mortified at the time, and probably also somewhat concerned about their son's moral development.

Anyway, I hope the elderly woman got over it. Probably so. She was pretty old. On the timeline of her life, I'm sure that being slapped in church was at most an interesting, minor blip.

Maybe one day Eleanor will do something like that. Maybe she will shock and mortify me, if that's still possible. If she does, I will have to quietly murmur, "At last, we come full circle..."

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Dearest Jonathan,
I have spent the afternoon reading your blog from soup to nuts. It has been a most pleasurable experience. Rather than post on the last day, I chose to post on my birth day, entitled Collaboration. It is a sign.
Meanwhile, my niece is two and has a proclivity for physical violence that has her family in a dither. She pinches. She puts her index finger on the foreheads of toddlers and pushes until they fall over. Most recently, she took off her shoe and used it to hit a child. Her family is terrified of what this must mean. I laugh and call her Khrushchev.
More pictures, more audio files, more everything, please.
Love,
Sarah