Sharks and Legos

Not this weekend, but still a good story! (I’ve saved up some stories from my month of not writing on here.)

Becky and Dad thought it was okay to watch Jaws with Lucas.

(WWHHAATT??!!) Exactly. Thank you.

This screams through every mom’s head when you have a boy who likes to repeat everything and has been slashing duplo and cardboard light sabers at everything and everybody for years – add on his uncles, big sisters, and “the meats” from Lord of the Rings and yes, Mom is sure someone lost their senses.

What does Lucas do after watching Jaws?

Jump in the ocean at 6pm the next night with no reservations. He actually teases Jillian, “there might be a giant shark in here! Cool!”

Nope, not scared of sharks.

He makes a lego model of the fisherman’s boat and says to Dad, “I think we need a bigger boat.”

Mom facepalmed…

But here is his boat plus Becky’s updates (he went to Becky and asked for her help to make it look “really real”) I added a cute picture of Lucas with Legos ages ago because he wouldn’t sit still for a picture!

So he played with Becky’s updated shark hunter boat for quite some time, and yes, he knows lines from this iconic movie now – this child can replay an entire movie in his head.

Normally, it’s a battle from Star Wars or a scene from one of Jaquline’s favorite swashbucklers (yes, her “movie crush” is Errol Flynn and my family laughs at that because he was mine too) or from the latest John Wayne war movie, but for said entire weekend it was from Jaws. The funny part? The Lego shark was nowhere near the right proportions of the shark from the movie so Lucas kept claiming his hand was the shark and the little lego shark was “his tiny friend laughing.”

…and this is where most of my inspiration for children’s books comes from!

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tart

The Big Wave

What can football have to do with a discussion about Roman-era cultures?

September 8, 2018

The Big Wave

Football season started…

Yes, we watch lots of college football and I have one daughter determined to be a Gator cheerleader for at least one season.

Becky and I are watching Ben-Hur and we start talking about Biblical families and eventually trace back to the origin of the Ishmaelites and Israelites.  Sheik Ilderim is one of Becky’s favorite characters in Ben-Hur and she’s making the case that his culture appears to follow nomadic Jewish teachings.  (This was another hypothetical history, culture, and religion play debate.  I love to make their brains work by asking questions and playing “defense attorney” when they choose to lay a case for something.)

During this discussion, Becky says “well, Ishmaelites are technically all family; sons of Ishmael like Israelites are all sons of Israel.”

I said, you could go to say we are all descendents of  Noah.  She replies with “Adam,” pauses, “oh, yeah, Noah and his family were the only ones living after the big wave.”

And I, with my over-active imagination, get a hilarious mental picture:

I see cartoon water as “wavelets” all lining up and “doing the wave” around the Earth like football fans around a stadium.  Little wavelets rise up on top of each other like cheerleaders in a pyramid as they shout, “we’ve got to cover all those mountains!” There’s a dolphin with flippers up shouting, “roller coaster!”  A few hammerhead sharks try to ride the wave (my Daddy tells a story of surfing into the Savannah River & seeing hammerhead sharks surfing next to him).

I will never think of the Great Flood without hearing Becky’s voice say “big wave” and seeing that mental picture.  (Used to be, when I heard “Noah” and “ark,” my brain replayed the 50s cartoon Noah where everyone is singing and this line always sings through my mind: “I’m Mother Noah, Captain Noah’s wife, I wear the pants aboard this boat, you bet your life.”)  I like the wave-surfing sharks and roller coaster loving dolphin picture better.

Sometimes the over-active imagination of a writer is a strange thing…

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

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