Quickly we have learned there are many questions in this place for which there is only one answer.
“Why is there a giant black beetle riding a green tree frog on our driveway?” #becausedarwin
“Why is there a python dangling from our front porch eating some kind of lizard?” #becausedarwin
“Woah, why did we get home so quickly?” #becausedarwin
“Why does that restaurant sell laksa pizza?” #becausedarwin
“Why don’t I groom anymore?” #becausedarwin
“Why am I sweating under water?” #becausedarwin
“Why does my lemonade taste like mosquito?” #becausedarwin
“Why does that guy whose name appears to be Dan have his first name ‘Dan’ as his numberplate? Why does he need that? Doesn’t he know his name is Dan already? Why do I need to know his name is Dan?” #becausedarwin
“Why am I wearing a tie-dyed shirt at work on a Tuesday with three buttons undone?” #becausedarwin
It has become a common refrain in our home and the boys enjoy its use a great deal; “Milo, why haven’t you brushed your teeth?” … because Darwin dad.
THE LOLLYPOP GUY
I feel there is likely to be a whole series of these, as the weird becomes the norm… but I’ll start with this one, which is our best example of the genre to date.
On the last day of the Flamingo episode the school crossing lollypop guy asked me for a photograph. We had been engaging in fragmented conversation all week, but standing in the middle of a school crossing dressed as a flamingo is not the best locale for properly breaking the ice. I responded with general positivity about the concept of the photograph and hustled the boys forward, but by the time I returned he had gone, or I had removed Kevin, or a combination of the two.
The following week as I sat in a coffee shop not far from the school, the lollypop guy walked past and, somehow recognising me as Kevin’s chaperone, sat down. We chatted for a few minutes as I laid out the general ethos of Flamingo Parenting when, all of a sudden, I noticed a giant poster of his face sitting conveniently just over his shoulder about 20 metres away. It was framed perfectly. I did one of those non-sensical ‘point at picture, then point at person, then point at picture again’ routines, whilst looking baffled and intrigued.
“Oh yeah, I am the local member of Parliament” he said nonchalantly.
#becausedarwin
More to come.
Because in Darwin the Post Office workers are pretty confident they know everybody who visits by sight