close enough to touch, far enough to flee

my friend's 5 year old recently got a toy veterinary medicine set - it's super cool, like one of those mini play kitchens a lot of kids have, but it's set up to pretend to be a vet (it's this thing) - it has stuffed animals and things to weigh them, give them medicine, take x-rays, write on their charts, etc.

so this kid, who is five and to my knowledge has no experience in the administrative bureaucracy of modern healthcare, puts a stuffed pig named Piggy on the exam table. she pretends to draw blood from Piggy using a fake syringe, and the blood goes into a toy test tube vial that she calls "the resulter"

i'm playing with her, right, so i'm like, awesome, what are the results of Piggy's blood test? and she says "we have to send it to the scientists." so we send the vial to the scientists (put it in her bedroom) and when we get back to the vet playset i'm like awesome what did the scientists say? and she says they have not gotten back to us yet

so she rolls her eyes, exasperated, and says we have to call the scientists. she pretends to call them. apparently, they tell her that Piggy's blood test is "at the bottom of the list" and "we have to WAIT." she frowns. we wait a bit longer and call them back. they tell us it will be a while! she says we should go ask the scientists in person so we go back to her bedroom and she inquires at this imaginary lab, at which point the scientists yell at her and tell her now they will make us wait even longer!

keep in mind she is 100% directing this play. she is making all this up. she is fully in control of this game, and she has decided that what we are going to pretend is that we are dealing with this exhausting nonsense, not actually treating Piggy.

finally the blood tests come back. they are inconclusive. the scientists do not know what is wrong with Piggy. the little girl walks back to the stuffed pig on the exam table, sighs deeply, and says in a very serious voice "we can never help you."

i'm obsessed with this kid. when given complete control over a make believe scenario, instead of becoming the heroic rescuer administering effective cures, she is instead a beleaguered vet making multiple calls to an overworked lab only to be left unable to help her patient.

“𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐈 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐈 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐭 𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡. 𝐈’𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞. 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐨.” -𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐇𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐲, 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟓 Remembering acclaimed lgbtq+ artist David Hockney who passed away on June 11th, 2026 in London, England at the age of 88. Hockney's sun-drenched paintings regularly featured positive aspects of queer life during an era when the lgbtq+ community was encouraged to dwell in the shadows by an intolerant and unaccepting status-quo. The 1972 painting featured in this post entitled Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold during a 2018 Christie's auction of Hockney's works for $90.3 million in November 2018, establishing the painting as the most valuable work of art created by a living artist at the time.