I was a wierd little kid. For one thing, I didn't like other kids. They just seemed so - well -

child-like.

What I did like were books. And I would definitely go through phases as to their subject matter. There was the horse book phase, the girl detective phase and - ah, yes - the Grimm's Fairy Tale phase. Those were such gruesomely delicious fare. My absolute fave was the one about the goose girl who was really a princess but an imposter stole her identity and killed her horse but the princess goose girl saved some drops of her dead horse's blood and the blood drops talked to her and helped her expose the bad imposter person who was then stripped of all her clothes and thrown in a barrel studded with nails and dragged through the streets of the village until she was dead.

That's GREAT!

My book of Aesop's fables was tamer stuff. Here I could learn valuable life lessons with consequences that didn't include dragging a naked person around in a nail-y barrel until they were all nail- ified. But the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper really bugged me.

So to speak.

It was a simple story. The Ant worked real hard and saved up food and was secure in his future. He had no time for fun or anything like that but that wasn't the point. He was secure. The Grasshopper on the other hand didn't work at all. He farted away all his time, saved no food and starved. In other words, he wasn't secure.

I really couldn't relate to that boring ant guy. I knew I was supposed to. I was supposed to grow up to be a good ant citizen, work hard, save and be secure and then I could die. The Grasshopper skipped the whole toiling part. Sure he died but hey - the dude could party.

There should have been a third character in that fable. Someone to create a little balance. Like, I don't know - a potato bug maybe. Yeah, it would be a potato bug that worked hard enough to keep him in potatoes, put some away in a little potato safe and then score some down-time. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Why am I going on about all this? I'm venting. I have spent the last few days in full on Ant mode. I did not become an artist and writer and to successfully avoid a real job for a couple of decades to be that Ant guy. But sometimes I have to. And that's because I spend way too much time being the Grasshopper - coloring my little pictures, writing my little stories, you know, farting away the time.

I guess I could attempt some balance in my life to avoid cramming all my boring business work into a hell week because I put it off until the absolute last minute by being the potato bug. It would be make sense, really - but - you know, potato bugs are not glamorous or exciting and grasshoppers have the fun thing down pat. I can't help it. I know what my role in that story would be.

So ants can stuff it. Potato bugs can take a flying leap except they really can't because they have teeny short legs and body like a miniature Air Stream travel trailer but they know what I mean.
I mean Grasshoppers rule!

Go grasshoppers!

Party!

Party!