Priorities

Yesterday afternoon Monkey grabbed a pen and demanded paper and said he wanted to draw a picture of Elongated Man (yes, he's a real B-list superhero) for a story. While such doings are Mabel's constant MO, this is unusual for Monkey, so I provided the materials and waited to see what would transpire.

He drew a long blob and gave it spindly legs and ball feet. Then there was some scribbly stuff between the legs. I wasn't really watching, but as I sat beside him eating a bowl of mid-afternoon Cheerios, I heard him say - to himself or to me, whomever - "...and that's the bum, and that's where the poo and the wee come out..." Then: "I'd better give him a penis." A short line appeared between the legs, above the cloud of scribble. Now I realised what the cloud was.

"Does he have a head?" I asked, curious to see where his priorities lay. He pointed at the top of the blob.
"There's his head." He drew a horizontal line to signify the division between head and torso.
"How about eyes and a nose and things?"
"Oh. I never thought of that." He provided two round eyes, a circular nose, a wide smiling mouth, and goggles. "Now. He's done."
"Arms? Does he have arms?"
"Oh yeah, he needs arms." Arms were appended.

It was interesting to see what he considers the most vital body parts to be.

Then he coloured the whole thing in with royal blue marker, obscuring all the interesting details, and dictated the story for me to transcribe. I will reproduce it here for posterity. (I reworded a little for clarity and to avoid repetition, but I didn't change the story. This version has been approved by the author.)

Elongated Man started to call Batman when he noticed that baddies were fighting and were thinking about their machine that would crush the whole planet. He realised that the baddies were on the case. He tried to break the robot with his hammer while he was on the phone. Elongated Man was in the lab at the time. They fought ("fighted and fighted," he said) until Elongated Man had a good idea: he called Plastic Man to help him make a wall to trap the baddies so that then they could crush them and the machine with their hammers. Crazy Quilt was the person who invented the machine.

The end.

I look forward to many more illustrated stories once he starts writing his own.