The year ends, and I've neglected my sketchbook. Bad Jeff! Searching for something to document, I recall an event that happened a few days ago.
We were having a small Christmas party at home when the silent night was disturbed by a shrill and very un-Christmaslike war cry. We looked out the living room window and saw that the neighbour's kid was hacking apart our snowman with a machete.
Some background: we've had enough unseasonable snow for both a white Christmas and a humble, lumpy snowman in our front yard. And while the neighbour's kid likely fancied himself to be the Next Great Canadian Ninja, he was bundled up in enough winter togs to make Ralphie's Mom from "A Christmas Story" feel happy.
It was too dark for the camera so I didn't get a picture, resolving to record the event in my sketchbook instead. Besides, I think I gave the kid a bit of dignity in my picture. In real life, he was more like kneeling in front of the pieces and clubbing them with his toy knife while yelling "Hi-yah!" over and again.
Kids. I dimly recall being one once a long time ago, and being roughly as destructive. Still, death by mincing for our innocent snowman?
"Hey, don't you think you're being a little weird?" I called out through the window, adding "even for you" in my thoughts.
"It's okay. It's just a plastic machete," he says. How reassuring!
Right now, I can't tell if in twenty years we're going to be telling the press at the crime scene "He was such a quiet child," or if we're going to be voting him in as Prime Minister. I mean, I wish I thought of chopping up my snowmen when I was a kid.
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