Comment: No Van Gogh on the Child!

How do you know what you can get rid of when you’re doing a stealth household crap purge while your kids are out at school?

Because today my daughter looked for two different things, on two different occasions, and I had to b.s. my way out of both of them, because I had just thrown out both items. Down a long, irretrievable garbage chute. I didn't think she'd notice. But obviously I was wrong.

One item, her summer sandals, are pretty outgrown and are kind of hazardous when she runs in them. Now that it’s cooler and she’s wearing tights, her feet slip around in them in a disturbing way. Not safe? Easy. Goodbye Target sandals.

The other object I got rid of more for aesthetic purposes. Or maybe due to their creep factor. We had these sticker/tattoo/coloring kits for Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh. My daughter got into the tattoos from the Van Gogh collection. She put one on the other day, and when I saw the rest of them today, I chucked them. I mean, would you want your preschooler wearing a very talented and depressed one-eared man on her shin? It wasn't a painting of sunflowers or anything, it was a self-portrait.

Van Gogh was good, no question, but have you looked at his stuff? Really looked? His palette is so dreary and all his flowers droop. There’s a reason. The poor man was clinically depressed. He shot himself in a field. (Probably one he painted earlier in his torturous career.) I’m not denying he was a great artist. I just don’t particularly like what he painted.

Having cycled through several bouts of depression myself, I suppose it hits a little too close to home for me, to see a truly depressed person’s work, and on my daughter’s body no less. Shouldn't it be a tattoo of someone like The Wiggles? I'd even take Barney in lieu of this.

So I threw out the Van Gogh tattoos.

Honestly, do you blame me?

It won’t be so easy when she grows up and gets a real tattoo of a depressed alternative band name tattooed on her ass.

But if it’s punk, I’ll understand.

Maybe I’ll get one, too.