Obsessions are ephemeral these days. Books come and go like fair-weathered friends and this week's trash will soon become next week's treasure. Just as The Very Quiet Cricket (Archer's beloved book of champions) has quite literally been pushed under the couch to make way for a new and classic tale of rhyme and father-son relations: Hop on Pop, which according to Wikipedia is an existential odyssey contrasting the child's desire for freedom and the intrinsic need to satisfy parental authority figures. The rhyming couplets represent at once an acceptance of cultural form and tradition and a free-form explosion of self-actualizing creation...
I mean... Psh! No wonder, right?
I have a weakness for Hop on Pop because as a little girl it was one of my favorite books and when Archer first hopped on my lap and asked me with his eyes to read it to him, I was thrilled. We'd crack open the book and read it cover to cover. From ... Up Pup. Pup is Up to... Ask me tomorrow but not today! And then again. And again. And... again.
Until one very ordinary day when Hop on Pop was reduced to one single page--a page that was as horrifying as it was interesting.... As hilarious as it was sad. As insightful as it was superfluous:
The Cactus Page
aka
"NO PAT NO Don't sit on that!"
aka:
Cactus! Ahhh! No!!!!
These are the words Archer is "saying" in his way which sounds like: Eeeeeek! Deeeeeeekikikiki!!! Aaiiioioiiiiioooiiuuuiiiiooooooo in a very high-pitched maniacal way. He then looks up at me, laughs, points and screams again. "Eeeeeiiieeeeeeiiiiiiooooooo!" before punching Pat in the head for being such a jackass and sitting on the cactus. (Duh!)
It was cute at first. Actually, it was adorable but as the days have passed and my life has been reduced to screaming gibberish at Pat and his cactus, it has become exhausting and not-cute-anymore.
"Arch. Dude. Don't you want to read something else? Go Dog Go, perhaps? I hear there's a wicked dog party in a tree and everyone's going to be there!"
"Ahhhhhh!!! Blaaaaaaaaahblahcactus NOOOOOOO!"
I seriously doubt the cactus fetish will last much longer. It usually works out so that the day I post about one thing that "thing" is replaced with something new and even more deranged. I digress... For now I've taken to hiding Hop on Pop under the dog's bed. Because No Pat. No! can just as easily be replaced for Go Dog Go.
And at this point I don't even care if Go Dog Go is lacking the "existential odyssey"of Hop on Pop. As long as there isn't a cactus, I'm down for the cause.GGC
