Pudd’ng is walking in my footsteps

Writing under the influence.
Every writer has a method to their madness. When I am in the throes of creating, music is the soundtrack that “takes me there”. Take away my music and my muse will scream you out of the workspace.

“Your eardrums will rapture,” Tenderoni keeps warning me against using earphones.

When it is one of those blue days, the song I love putting on repeat is Beauty for Ashes by Crystal Lewis and Ron Kenoly.

The lyrics, which are sound scriptural truths, talk about God turning around doggone situations on a dime.

Well, I never. Pudd’ng has also caught the creating-under-the-influence-of-music bug. However, I have a no-earphones rule for her.

“Dah-dee? Put for me the song on repeat,” she’ll say when I let her “use” my laptop.

The way baby girl hollers that first line of the Crystal/Ron collabo puts a smile on God’s face: “He gives beauty for rashes …”

It is ashes, baby, ashes.

DEAR GOD...
Each morning before Pudd’ng leaves for school, we pray for her. Mostly, being the house’s head and chief priest, Joe Soap is the cat who does the hallowed honours.

If it was not for Pudd’ng’s parroting, I would not have noticed that I always begin my prayers with the same words.

Which reminds me. Back in the day, I knew my father would intone two words, after like 10 seconds, when he was praying: “Jehovah Nyasaye”.

Our morning MO is, I pray, then Pudd’ng recites her verse. This morning baby girl surprised me by saying, “Dear God …” before stopping mid-sentence, just as I was about to say the exact words.

That is the opener I use every morning when praying for Pudd’ng. Perhaps, each morning as I open my mouth to pray, God, whom I believe has a sense of humour, goes, “Dear God…”

Nowadays, I remix it a little bit… and I am about to start speaking in tongues.

COPYCAT,INC

“When I’m writing composition, I hide so others can’t see my work and copy me,” Pudd’ng recently told us, demonstrating by crouching over her foolscap.

Maybe this is her way of beating cheats. Or maybe there is more to this than meets the eye.

Here is my other madness. When writing, I do not like intrusions or anyone peeking. It is just I, myself, and muse. Come too close for “creation”, and I serve you a knuckle sandwich.

“His Airness” Michael Jordan was close to his father James R. Jordan Sr.

As a child he imitated his father’s proclivity to stick out his tongue while absorbed in work.

He later adopted it as his own signature, displaying it each time he drove to the basket.

MIXING BUSINESS AND PLEASURE

“Can I have something to drink while I’m typing?” Pudd’ng likes asking, sweetly. Why, she sees me mixing business and (tea) pleasure. My answer to the above question is …

Wait.

Although I would love to indulge her, I am always careful about spillages on the keyboard.

Which can render me jobless. Our daughter is the princess of spillages, although, of late, she has styled up.

There were times when, if she went three straight days sans spilling something while eating, I would swear that something was wrong… or right. Depending on how you look at it.

So my answer to the drinking question is always, “No can do.”

PROS AND PROSE

In Pudd’ng’s last English composition, she liberally used the abbreviation etc. I reckon it is the old pupil-ish propensity of stumbling on a big word, then trying to impress one’s teacher.

“It means, and many others,” the little pro explained, feeling all Jane Austen.

Which goes to show what I have always believed: That writing rules can be broken, but you first have to know the rules.

“You shouldn’t use etc in your English compositions,” I still advised her, as I let her type another composition on the laptop.

The next day she saw something on TV and called me to the living room. Aha. She wanted me to see that she had been vindicated.

“The people on TV have also used it,” she said, “kwani they also know it means many others?”

Welcome to my world, Austen. That is how I feel when I think I have killed some prose, only to find that another writer killed… and buried that chapter nine blue moons ago.

PSST. “My classmate said ___ ____ is Illuminati,” Pudd’ng told us the other evening. The dash above is the name of a famous Kenyan gospel musician.

“Say what?” we asked, surprised, and she repeated the hearsay.

“What’s Illuminati?” we prodded.

“Me I don’t know.”

Me? I am dumbfounded.