Resuse, Repurpose, Recycle is the rage of the day. It is fashionable to paint stained T-shirts, cut old socks into mittens and carry the old, ‘vintage’ bag your grandmother received on her wedding day while sporting the latest shoes (that needed a home loan to buy) to eat out in restaurants that were once aeroplanes. I am supporter of recycling old stuff to save the environment.
But my daughter has taken the ‘Resuse, Repurpose, Recycle’ phrase to another level. I had once shared her story where Lambert, the Sheepish Lion was repurposed to be Lamabert, Hippoish Hippo.
After creating several versions of the story (Lambert, The Sheepish Crocodile, Lambert: The Wolfish Lion, Lambert: The Sheepish Hippo), she stopped and I sighed with relief. I am not the one for plagiarism. Now, she has taken a similar approach for a Hindi kids song, “Aaj Mangalwar h“.
Original plot: A mouse gets ill on a Tuesday and goes to doctor. The doctor gives him injection and he cries in pain, “Ooi, Ooi, Ooi”.
First day she asked me to replace the story with another animal, I got creative, using a Giraffe, I built a story where Giraffe, being too tall, could not find shelter on a rainy day and fell ill. His mom took him to the doctor. The doctor tried injection but it broke. So, he gave him a medicine and Giraffe became well.
Big mistake! Now my daughter asks me to build stories around the same plot, using:
- Different animals: Rats, Rabbits, Giraffe, Lion, Sloth, Elephant, Beaver, Crocodile, Fish, Swan…∞ (infinity)
- Different relations: Mom ill, Baby ill, Father ill, Sibling ill…∞
- Different diseases: Fever, runny nose, runny stomach…∞
- Different causes for the diseases: Bad weather, playing in rain, over eating, stomach infection, swimming too long…∞
- Doctors of different species
- Different forms of medication
The idea is superb since the combinations are endless but it is a blow to my creativity.
Once, when I retaliated and declined to honour the request for these stories, my daughter decided to humour me by telling me the stories herself. In one of them, she gave 100 injections to a lizard baby.
I feel for the lizard baby and wonder if she survived the wrongful detainment and the horrific treatment. Nobody deserves that, even in imagination. As the diseases and their treatments become more graphic, I am praying this fetish passes soon before we get a notice from PETA…
Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective 
Wonderful imagination from the little one.
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Yeah…She is a great storyteller in making. She is pretty careful about ‘lifting inspiration’ from other stories and them remolds them until they are completely different. She expects me to do the same…I am just not at par with her 😀
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It sounds to me as if your daughter plans to enter the medical profession. That’s a good career, so perhaps she should be encouraged to inject baby lizards in her imagination. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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She is more likely to become a writer/painter. Her imagination is vivid. I have enough painted paper from her to paper the walls of my six-room house and there will still be some to spare.
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