A Latter-Day Mr Squiggle

Okay, life is getting a teensy bit less hectic, although I have been exceedingly busy of late. I was not rostered today, so I have been following up proposed author appearances with local libraries, and organising interviews with local branch of ABC. At this stage, I am pre-recording an interview tomorrow in the window I have between finishing work and tutoring English. I will share a link to the interview, but I'm told the questions I'm likely to be asked are the usual run of the mill: What's It About, What Inspired You, and How's It Been Received. I said to the producer, 'A seventeen-year-old girl trying write her memoirs, I wanted to try something different, and very well, thank you.' In the meantime, peeps, here is  a link to the first chapter of Howling on a Concrete Moon.

Being a parent brings many surprises and challenges, some of which you can really do without. My fifteen-year-old is a gluttonous, pimpled fiend, but thanks to his metabolism and the fact he is a dancer, he never gains weight. One thing I've noticed (and remember myself) is that fifteen-year-olds find the most infantile things funny. Last night, I drove He of Voracious Appetite to his dance class, and just as I turned off the engine, I was subjected to one of those things you can really do without.

Kid: 'Mum, we can't go in yet. I've still got a penis on my leg.'

Me (in a state that transcends normal flabbergasted): 'What?!!!!'

Kid (pointing to something on his thigh that looked like a crude prison tattoo): 'My friend drew a penis on my leg.'

I stared in abject delirium, and my kid told me the backstory to the work that went into this, um, art, including the fact the artist has wanted to draw pubes, but my son suggested the hairs on his leg would serve this purpose well. I told him he couldn't go to dance with that thing on his leg, and that he would have to scurry into the toilet and scrub it off. He then suggested - and I swear I saw the lightbulb appear over his head - that we turn it into a rocket ship. I handed him my pen, and my son went about sketching portholes, and combustion flames coming from what had once been testes but were now the base of the rocket. He added a stick figure sitting astride the craft, and asked me to write the caption: I'm going to the moon! So, I did. My son exclaimed at the apostrophe I included: 'Hey, you're even punctuating!' I replied, 'It's ME. I'm hardly likely to not punctuate, am I?' The cover-up was completed with my son taking the pen and tracing a speech bubble around the text and attaching it to the 'astronaut's' mouth. I compared myself to Mr Squiggle, and then had to explain to my kid who Mr Squiggle was.

I wonder how Mr Squiggle, Blackboard, and Miss Jane would have coped with this one?