That Smell in Your Kitchen is Not What You Think

When I was very young I used to make something that everyone in my home referred to as "ugly soup." According to my mom, this meant that I would take a bowl and fill it with the most elaborate collection of random kitchen ingredients. Water, salt, pepper, tiny crumbs of bread, a few leaves that I had found at the park earlier, a berry or two, some balled up pieces of paper, a Lego, some oregano, dried cat food, a Saltine. I mean really, I could continue this list for hours. Don't believe me? Ok, try this. Imagine you are about three years old. And now go take a walk through your apartment, using only your three year old brain, and find "ingredients" for a wonderful, imaginary cooking project.

Yeah its pretty incredible isn't it? I bet you didn't know how many small things were just sitting on surfaces, waiting to be dropped into a bowl of water.

In any case, I would fill up this bowl and then "cook" it in the small play kitchen that sat in the corner of our real one. Now here is where it got interesting. You see, I was little. So inevitably I would put my delicious meal into the oven and then immediately move on to whatever activity I wanted to do next. Sometimes, if they were lucky, my parents had watched me make this latest batch of ugly soup, and once they were fairly certain I had forgotten about it, they would slip into the kitchen and quietly dump the whole thing out. Sometimes.

I think you see where this story is going.

Occasionally the ugly soup was left there cooking behind that tiny wooden door for quite some time. Hours turned into days. Eventually there was an odd smell in the kitchen. My parents looked in the fridge for leftovers that had crept to the back. They checked under the oven for mouse traps. Eventually someone, probably my dad, thought to check the play kitchen, where they inevitably found something that resembled a sixth grade science project.

Gross.

But we humans sure do like to mix stuff together to see what happens. And pile things on top of other things to make new things. And touch stuff to see if it feels like you thought it would. And if you are sitting there going "No way, not me, I never do those things", answer this. The last time someone said to you, "This is so weird, taste this!" did you?

Don't feel bad. Curiosity and creativity are in our nature. Remember that rancid bowl of leaves and spices in my kitchen.

On that note, I found this in Prospect Park about a week ago. I am not sure if a grownup or a kid made it. I kind of hope it was a grown up. And not some dad who built it with his son after tossing a ball around. I mean a total adulty adult, some former full-suited finance guy, walking through the park by themselves. I like to imagine this guy, who suddenly has a lot more free time on his hands, stopping to stare at a pile of sticks and a tree trunk and remembering when he was 6 and his favorite activity was to dump the entire box of Legos onto the living room floor. I like to picture this guy carefully placing one stick on top of the other until his sculpture started to resemble a small wooden throne. I also like to think that after he left, a family of small tree fairies flew in and took up residence there, super excited because the humans were finally building things again. 

When we adulty adults were small, wide eyed children, we used to look at trees and imagine the fairies that danced through their branches. We would give them sparkly wings, flowing hair and sing-songy names like Celestia, and then make up stories about their wild adventures. Then, at some point, life got in the way.

I am not saying that to find joy, we need to revert back to the days of ugly soup and fairy tales. I think it might be enough to just look into the kitchen cabinet and remember. Or to grab a stick off of the ground and put it somewhere else instead. 

Or perhaps to simply pick a flower, and give her a name.