TheBanyanTree: in the "Weird Things Parents Do" category

[Julie Anna Teague]

Ok, I've done a lot of weird things as a parent.  It's part of the job
description:  Prepare to be surprised.  From spending eighteen hours
trying to catch a recalcitrant pond frog, to making a statue of the Greek
god Athena from clay on a few hours' notice, to explaining to your kids
that earthworms don't have teeth and why Bigfoot is called "BigFOOT" when
the thing has two feet, to coming up with finger food for fifty students
which "captures" the culinary culture of French Guyana.  I swear these are
actual requests from my children.  The weirdness never ends and their
confidence in me never flags.  This weeks' foray into the creative
unknown: help imagine and implement a costuming idea for a six inch, fuzzy
green, battery-operated, walking pig. 

This pig was the reward for selling a certain number of magazine
subscriptions for a school fundraiser.  You don't know my son Andy--if
there is a reward for something, he WILL get the reward if at all humanly
possible.  And I WILL agree to help or I will never, ever, ever, ever be
left alone, not for a second, until I do.  In this case, I only needed to
purchase two magazine subscriptions--Yoga Journal and Cooking Light--for a
year, since several neighbors were pressed into the scheme as well, so I 
thought I'd gotten off easy, until the pig arrived. 

The idea is that we outfit this pig and enter it into an all-school pig
costume contest and race for BIG BUCKS.  I don't know which was more
exciting for Andy, the pig or the money.  As it turns out there are only
20 pigs in the contest--only 20 kids who were apparently motivated enough
by a walking pig to get out there and sell those magazines--so there is a
good chance Andy will come home with some pig prize money.  I, on the
other hand, can never hope to recoup the financial losses incurred in
supporting his contesting addictions and science fair obsessions.  

We nearly came to blows over the pig's outfit, having agreed to and
purchased supplies to transform it into a clown pig and Andy subsequently
deciding that the clown outfit was stupid (a green fuzzy pig in a clown
suit...stupid??).  So we switched, mid-pig, to Pirate but couldn't get the
bandana to stay on his fat little pig head, and finally made a mad dash
across town in holiday shopping traffic to buy a six inch piece of black
leather-like plastic to make a pig biker outfit.  

Ok, so it looked real cute in the end.  It has a multicolored mohawk
hairdo, three earrings, pipecleaner tusks (Andy thought this made it look
tougher) and a black pleather jacket with skull and crossbones.  The
contest is today.  I'm all pins and needles.  I have a lot invested in the
pig, whom Andy named "Alfredo" by the way.  Alfredo the biker pig.  

Julie
jateague at indiana.edu