Desktops and In-jokes

Hello Possums. What do you have on your desk top?

I copied an idea from a colleague of mine. On her computer she had a tessellating picture of a young man. I asked her if it was her son. Actually, it was a foreign opera singer who she had a crush on. Oops. Anyway I thought that was a great idea so I went home from work and googled images of Mathew McFayden, found a nice one of him as Darcey looking pensive in the mist and tessellated it across my desk top. It lasted for about a month.

The kids often use my computer and they are savvy. They edited the Darcey picture using Microsoft Paint, and added buck teeth, horns and scars to him. I rectified this and enjoyed my unadulterated tessellating Darcey for a short time, before he was sabotaged again. This time one of the girls replaced him with her own composition on Paint – a funky design featuring MUFFINS! At this point I conceded and allowed Darcey to be replaced by muffins. In fact I liked the muffin design so much that they are now a permanent feature of my desktop.

As well as the fact that I bake them often, muffins are an in-joke in our house. We all love the muffin films. Number 4 is our favorite. When my eldest got her mobile phone in year 8, I sent her her first text:

Hey kid, do you like muffins?

She shot back a quick reply, Um I guess so… (She’s obviously a fast learner when it comes to texting).

I followed along just as quickly with, What kind of muffins?

She happened to be on an excursion that day. When she got home she laughed with me about our exchange. Apparently her friends wanted to know: Does your mother always send you crazy messages?

Nothing like an in-joke to strengthen a relationship with a teenage daughter!