Piggyback

"Can I have a piggyback?"

I didn't take your pig.
But even if I did,
I wouldn't give it back to YOU,
I'd take it to the zoo. 
Whatcha' gonna' do with it?
You don't live on a farm.
Giving back your little pig would only do it harm.
You shouldn't try to keep a pig without a proper pen. 

"Um.."
"An airplane ride then?"

-B.C. Byron
I didn’t take your pig and I don’t want one on my back.
Buy my book here

Misunderstandings abound when we use strange phrases to describe things. Where does the term “piggyback” come from anyway. Surely kids were never foolish enough to try and ride on the backs of these surly farm animals. I was always warned not to make the pigs angry when visiting my neighbor’s farm and I could understand why after my brother told me what he saw a pig do to a rattlesnake. His buddy caught a full-grown rattler out in the weeds while they were feeding the hogs and said to my brother, “check this out” while throwing the snake straight into the pig pen. No pigs died as my brother was anticipating. Instead, the pigs went into psycho mode and poised with a sharp hoof right over the rattlesnake, waiting for the moment to strike. They snake’s head was crushed in one slick move, but the pigs didn’t stop there. They swarmed like bees and tore the creature apart, then devoured it. My brother’s friend followed this horror scene with the warning, “that could happen to you if you mess with the pigs”. I don’t know if these were particularly demonic pigs or if they had been trained as assassins, but I did learn from this story that I don’t really want a true piggyback ride. I’ll stick with the old fashioned airplane ride.

One of my favorite activities, when I got too heavy for airplane rides, was what we called “the cannon”. My sister would lie on her back on the basement floor and pull her knees up to her chest. Then one of us would sit on her feet and start the countdown. My sister had some pretty strong legs because she could launch us clear across the basement. Loads of fun while you’re in the air, but not so much when you realized that the basement floor was just thinly carpeted cement with no carpet padding. We got a ton of bruises and and good memories. We also may have lost a few memories when the trajectory was off, flipping us onto our heads.

Another favorite when I was young – putting on slick snow pants and sliding down the stairs backwards. It created a ton of friction heat so we had to keep our hands or any other exposed skin up off the carpet. It was also super bumpy, which made the screams all the more hilarious as our voices jolted up and down while we slid. Snow pants didn’t last very long in our house. Neither did carpet.

Window Art

Please don't wipe away my art.
I worked so hard,
I can't restart.
Don't you know how tough it is
to squish a face like this?
Have you seen such perfect pairs
of greasy hand and tongue prints?
Artistic growth
or clean windows,
which is more important?

-B.C. Byron
A masterpiece crafted pianstakingly by hand… and face and tongue. And YOU just want to wipe it away?
Buy my book here

The creativity of kids is something to be admired. Nearly everything they see is part of a new invention or an art project. A few months ago, I went into the bathroom by my girls’ bedroom looking for an extra roll of toilet paper. As I bent to open the cabinet beneath the sink, my hand brushed across a crusty white something stuck to the wood. stepping back in disgust, I discovered a whole pattern of crunchy toilet paper blobs cemented to the cabinet, the floor, and even the mirror above the sink. My daughters were feeling artsy when they found out that soggy toilet paper is adhesive, almost like glue, and drives on nice and hard if you leave it for a while. In that same day they also learned that bars of hand soap can be used to write messages and draw hearts on glass. Clever and intersting as this art project was, I didn’t really appreciate it at the time. This lack of admiration may have had something to do with the fact that we were expecting guests the following day and dried TP blobs are not exactly a traditional wall decoration. The scrubbing, I’m told, was not nearly as fun as the creating of this project. There were also complaints about how long it had taken to craft the spine-shivering piece of work and what seemed to be genuine confusion at my reaction to it.

Anything and everything works for making art. Words, pencil and paper, cardboard boxes, spaghetti noodles, earwax, ketchup and mustard, old food from the fridge, markers on faces, the list is endless. Find your thing and start a new art trend, just make sure your mom doesn’t have to clean up after you’re done creating.

I must admit that I still enjoy putting my own face on a freshly washed window and smearing it across while my eyes are scrunched and shut and tongue hanging out. If you do it right, it’s sort of like an ink blot test that psychologists administer to patients. All sorts of interesting shapes and stories can come from a single face smudge and even better when you add handprints and streaky nostril marks. Unfortunately, adults seem to get in even more trouble than kids for doing this – especially at work. This is why my artistic endeavors have mostly turned to poetry and drawings. I’d love to get back into the window grease gig, but those days are over I guess. Enjoy your window art while you’re young.