Not Far from the Tree...

This effort by my oldest is a comic strip, called Foop and Notch.

This is the sequel, Foop and Notch 2: Ultimate Laffs**.

I show you this not to highlight my daughters creative accomplishments, but to share with you a secret:

I did exactly the same thing when I was her age.

I don’t have copies of them (nothing like that survived the frequent relocations that occurred during my childhood), but I remember that the main characters were geometric shapes. There was a triangle, a square, the slightly nerdy rectangle and a teardrop shape that represented the female protagonist. My inspiration was Charles M Schulz’ Peanuts strip. I found out that SiSi’s muse is Calvin and Hobbs (she keeps one of the anthologies in her bed, to read as she goes to sleep).

She asked me to read her comic strips, and afterward we talked about them.

“Wow, they’re really great, SiSi! I’m curious, though. They seem rather violent. Why is that?”

She shrugged. “Kids like me think that stuff is funny, I guess.”

I remember saying the same thing to my dad.

Eerie, is what I’m saying.

** SiSi made a point of telling me that she knew this was not the correct spelling of the word, but that she decided to use it for effect. I was quietly stunned.