A Little Less Detail, Danny

I’ve got kids in grade school, so this week was spent preparing for their classes Valentine’s Day celebrations. The only things that have changed since I was a kid is that these days they hand out candy with the little paper valentines, and there’s more Pokemon valentines than there are Star Wars valentines.

But anyway, my oldest son, who is nine, was working on decorating his valentine box. I think a video card from newegg.com came in it originally, but with the addition of a strategically placed rectangular hole, it became a receptacle for little paper valentine cards. And he was decorating it with Pokemon, Spongebob, and other decidedly non-Valentine’s Day related stuff.

So I said, “Why not put a heart on there for Valentine’s Day?”

He goes to work and I hear giggling, so I look over and notice that the heart he drew also had a sword piercing it.

I said, “What, no blood dripping from the sword?” This turned out to be a great suggestion, and soon there were little drops of blood dripping from the tip of the blade and pooling below.

But then he started to erase the blood and told me, “That’s probably a little too much detail.”

I agreed that it might be.

Then he said, “My teacher told me not to draw things so detailed.”

“Oh? When did she tell you that?”

“At Halloween. She told us to draw monsters and I drew a zombie.”

“And your zombie was too detailed?”

“Yeah. I drew him taking a bite out of a brain and there was blood squirting out of it.”

“Squirting out of the brain?”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeah, that might’ve been a bit too detailed. Did you change it?”

“Yeah. I just made him holding the brain. He wasn’t biting it and there was no blood.”

“And the teacher said that was OK?”

“Yup.”

Sometimes it’s great to be a father.