Lessons in internal parenting
KeithHandy posted in Funny ha-ha, Your Soul on February 19th, 2007
So I’m off work, at the drug store, pickin’ up some snax, and my eye is frozen for a moment on some pads of paper. One says “sketch pad”, the other says “drawing pad”. (You’re probably expecting me to go on a sarcastic rant here about the difference between “sketching” and “drawing”, but you couldn’t be farther from the truth, so pipe down and let Uncle Keith finish his story.) So I realize what’s happening - it’s my inner child. I pull myself away from the art stuff and go back to my snack cruise, but I can hear the little child whining faintly somewhere inside me.
My first thought is that this is a tug of war, and that maybe buying some cheapo “art” stuff would be the more spiritual and living-for-today choice. My second thought is, “no, Keith, if you really want to draw or paint you have stuff at home”. My third thought is “WAAAAAH I WANT PAPER AND FINGERPAINT AND PLAY-DOH”.
Keep in mind, I am not a cold-hearted bastard with a dead soul. But I did have to set some boundaries. “Okay, inner child, tell you what. I’m going to stand here for a few minutes, and you can pick out maybe two things that you really want, and I’ll buy them.”
Well, you know what? The little brat couldn’t make up his mind. He just kind of looked around at everything. He didn’t seem to have any idea what he wanted to do with the supplies when he got them, either, and I of course had visions in my head of fairly ugly and uninspired splotches of color on a few sheets of paper stashed away in a drawer somewhere, while the rest of the paint and paper collected dust.
Finally, I said, “okay, just do this. Form a mental image of the stuff in front of you. If you still want something from here in the next few days, I’ll come back for it.”
That shut him up good.
