A Fish Out of Water (and Onto Paper)

A few weeks ago Daniel and Elizabeth were watching Finding Nemo, the Walt Disney animated film starring a clown fish named Marlin and his blue fish friend, Dory. It's not one of my favorites, though I do love the parts where Dory can't remember Nemo's name ("his son, Bingo" is one phrase that comes to mind). But the kids were enthralled with the movie. Of course, since we own the movie this was only about the 14,362nd time they had seen it, but this time they actually watched it all the way through without stopping.

Later that day, Daniel came up to me to show me his latest drawing. Now, normally his "drawings" are scribbles and don't make much sense to anyone but himself (I seriously believe he is often scribbling his mood and not trying to make actual pictures). But this time I was in awe of the masterpiece placed before me.

"It's the scary teeth fish from the movie," he states.

"Did you do this yourself?" I can barely stammer the question out.

"Yes. Except for this part Ammon had to help me," he replies as he points to the curved line that makes up the "fishing line" between the fish and the glowing ball in front of it.

What is probably more amazing than the drawing is the fact that the beast is hardly standing still in the movie, nor is it in the film for more than a few minutes. But it was enough to imprint its ugly mug into Daniel's head. And the most amazing of all is that Daniel is only 4 years old.

I excitedly congratulated him, and then we spent some time looking up this creature on the internet. We found out this lovely fish, by the way, is really called an anglerfish and most people believe it to be the ugliest fish on the planet.

Others may not see this exquisite rendering as something to get so excited about. But in our family, so far we have had a pitiful lack of artistic expression from anyone, so this is a big deal around here. Maybe he'll grow up to be like his Grandma Putnam (the watercolorist) or his Grandpa Goofy (the interior decorator/scene designer). Or he may just grow up to be something else, but I'll still be proud of his first fish.