What would an appropriate caption for this picture be?

Very simply, we provide a picture and see if any of our dozens of  readers can come up with a creative caption and leave it in the comments (Dad…really…you can click through to the link and leave a comment on the site. I promise I won’t tell that you took time away from birdwatching-trip-planning to catch up on your grandkids…)

So, here it is:

Any thoughts?

Well, we got a number of caption suggestions — only a couple of people actually commented directly on the original post, but we received others via e-mail:

• Aunt Kim: “I see green people… oops, I mean zucchini”
• Barbara M. (longtime friend…and landlord-for-a-summer…of Tim’s): “Thirteen flying (or falling) frogs”
• Uncle Paul:
  “I made 14 Friends with Impeccable Color Theory”
  Or
  “Paramecium in the 14 Spatial Dimensions”
  Or
  “Flatworms Awaiting the Knife”
• Grandma Marilyn: “March of the Sweet Pea People”

So, what was the artist thinking of? Turns out:

“Panty Liners”

A couple of weeks ago, while working on packing some clothes up in my bedroom, Alana headed downstairs to color and came up to see if she could hang her new picture in my room. She bounded in, rather excited, to show me her picture. “I drew panty liners!!!!!!” She was extremely proud. Let me back up and tell you how Alana got to the point of such pride over her panty liner picture.

Alana’s favorite colors are pink and purple. A few days ago, she discovered a purple box underneath the sink. It was a box of panty liners. She asked what they were and if she could have one, so I said yes and showed her how to put one in her underpants. She thought it was really great. Good enough to have her wear underpants rather than a pull-up diaper. She has more or less been using the potty and wearing panty lined underpants since then, which she has figured out how to line all by herself. She has also been showing off these panty liners to anyone who might be within 3 feet of her, including our little neighbor boys and an unsuspecting babysitter. I am working on that, but so far, my talks about not showing your privates don’t seem to be having an impact when the prospect of showing someone she has a panty liner is at stake.

I have to wonder if the marketing department at the panty liner company has any idea how important the color purple is to getting young girls hooked or how much they are likely to save me in money over the purchase of diapers, should Alana’s new pride in panty liners finally lead to toilet training success.

Marker on paper by Alana, aged 3