Animal Crackers

As a diligent parent I must watch my child for “signs.” Anytime a kid pulls some bizarre whacked-out stunt the collective media lunges to place the blame on the teacher, coach, friend, or parent who failed to recognize the “signs.” Apparently, every decision and action my child makes can be predicted by analyzing the “signs.” I’m constantly on alert for “signs” that El-Sea is stable enough not to roll into preschool armed with grenades and pipe bombs.

Last night El-Sea busted out the bag of animal crackers she scored on Halloween. She corralled the mammalian cookie-crackers into a neat pile on one side of her placemat. Then, in a highly organized and compulsive manner, my sweet little girl picked up each animal one by one and bit off its fore legs, hind legs, and head, in that particular order. This was not a chomp-chomp-CHOMP slop job; each appendage and cranium was meticulously nibbled off with surgical precision. The resulting desecrated torso was then casually discarded in a separate pile of carcasses. After El-Sea had systematically decapitated and amputated every lion, bear, giraffe, and elephant she scooped up the mound of defiled dead and placed them back in their original bag.

Is this a “sign”? The best explanation is that the crackers represent El-Sea’s fellow preschool classmates and her actions symbolize a subconscious desire to psychologically usurp their individual wills. El-Sea will subversively incapacitate, then immobilize, and finally subjugate her peers. This processes parallels the manner in which El-Sea first chewed of the animals fore legs (incapacitate), then hind legs (immobilize), and finally devoured the head (subjugate). By analyzing the meticulous procedure through which El-Sea defiled the crackers I can safely predict that her desires will manifest in a nonviolent fashion because her precision nibbling exhibited no aggressive tendencies. El-Sea does not want to harm her classmates, she wants to break them and enslave their minds. What good are devout minions if they cannot physically fulfill El-Sea’s quest for ultra-supremacy? I’m really proud of her, specifically I’m happy that she treated each animal equally. El-Sea does not want to create a class system where maimed giraffes retain their heads so that they can rule over headless lions with fore legs, which hold dominion over the quadruple amputee bears and elephants. I’ve taught El-Sea better than that, she knows all animal crackers are created equally and she was born to rule them all. Good girl!

On my way home from work I’m going to stop at the store for another bag of animal crackers. Before El-Sea can conquer the universe she will have to defeat her inner weaknesses. Tonight, the innocuous graham crackers will symbolize El-Sea’s private demons. She will wail on each cookie with a meat-tenderizing mallet until the all that remains is the dusty pulverized bones of her innocent fears, all the while screaming, “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in.” When the tenants below us in #201 call child services because of all the banging and yelling, I will soothingly explain the rational behind tonight’s exercise. Then I will invite the officers to join us in a piece of vanilla pudding pie so as to sample the gourmet graham cracker crust curtsey of El-Sea’s eradicated fears. Nothing is tastier than delicacies forged by the exorcized devils of chaste children’s dreams. Then I will raise a forkful of pudding pie and nonchalantly quip, “Hey, at least El-Sea isn’t living in a storage shed.” Everybody will throw back their heads like PEZ dispensers and laugh ostentatiously. Everybody, that is, except the one stiff cop who always plays by the rules. He will cock an emotionless eyebrow that will usher forth another round of mirthful chuckles from his wisecracking partner.
...and so it was written, shenry at 11/08/2002 02:27:00 PM.
...and so it was appended with .