Pudd’ng has been bitten by the creative bug too

I heard someone say that you should be wary when in the presence of a writer, because chances are that one day, they will write about you.

Tough luck, Tenderoni and Pudd’ng.  You are stuck with me. And tough luck to me because Pudd’ng has been bitten by the creative bug too, and I fear that one of these days, she will write about me.

BEDROOM PRIVATE EYE

Several days ago, Tenderoni and I were horsing around in the bedroom. The noises we were making attracted, as usual, the attention of our sweet sensitive soul.

“What are you two doing in there?” Pudd’ng kept asking, as she knocked the door.

When we did not open, but instead continued horsing around, making all these noises, her voice and knocking got more frantic and frenzied.

“What was happening here?” the bedroom private eye asked, as soon as she was in, trying to read our faces. 

“We were just playing,” we answered, knowing that anything we said or did could be used against us in a composition. 

“Are you sure?” she kept asking. Trying to read our faces. But we stuck to our script like Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

LICENSE TO CREATE

I’m still surprised, and relieved, very relieved, that Pudd’ng did not share our separation issue in her English compositions, though who knows, it could still be in her story bank.

Many times when Pudd’ng is doing her composition homework, she asks, “In a composition, should one always tell the truth?”

“Girl,” this tutor will reply, “There’s something called creative license. Which means that you can make up stuff as you go along, because that’s what creativity is all about.”

My reply always opens floodgates of creativity. Pudd’ng will use words and expressions that I did not even know she knew. The other term in her composition, she wrote how – to quote just one line that made me go, “What?” “My pet cat, Shifu likes playing with yarn”.

Last time I checked, her mama had infected her with ailurophobia. When Tenderoni hears a cat meowing, from her “binding and losing in Jesus’ name”, you would think it is Old Nick on the prowl.  

The little bird that tells it all

Last term, when I read Pudd’ng’s English composition for the end of term exam, it confirmed to me what I have always believed - that our daughter is keenly watching, not just what goes on in our house, but also what’s happening in her environment.

I was going through her file late at night, after both mom and daughter had hit the sack, and I started laughing out loudly. Baby girl had let her aunt’s Shifu out of the gunnysack.

“Last night a little bird told me what happened to Pudd’ng’s aunt,” I told Tenderoni.

“What little bird?”

“Baby girl,” I replied. “She told the whole school how your sister became an unemployment statistic.”

Clop! That’s the sound of Tenderoni’s eyeballs hitting the ground.

“How did you know what to write in your English composition?” we gently queried the usual suspect, not wanting to switch off her creative juices.

“I just guessed and wrote,” she replied, adding that I had told her that in a composition, one need not necessarily tell the truth. 

DAUGHTERHOOD 101

“Dah-dee? Do I write the script in a blog or what?” Pudd’ng asks me as she “works” in my home office. 

For a long time, she has been telling me that she is writing a script for a cartoon series. Before that, as she watched cartoons, she would fiddle with the radio’s volume button, telling me that she is directing the cartoon.

It’s only when I tell her that she first needs to do a script – that it’s the backbone of every series – that she now wants to hog my laptop.

“What’s a blog?” I ask, to which she replies that she doesn’t know.

“And how can you type your script in a blog, and yet you don’t know what it is?” 

“I already have a blog, but I haven’t written anything in it,” she says.

Perhaps she has already started her own gig, Daughterhood 101. So? Each time after she’s done using the laptop, I check what she was up to.  

PSST. Recently, while watching some program on TV, due to a dubbing snafu, the lip movement of the actors did not synchronize with the audio. My daughter put her small feet right in her mouth …

“Dah-dee? Why are their lips going upside down?”

Tee-hee. I’m “paying” forward before her blog dishes me my just deserts.