When Pig’s Fly

My morning habit involves watching the local TV news. I want to see what happened while I slept. This station offers a color the weather segment. The children draw weather events and send their artwork to the station. The station during a weather segment will show the artwork. These children are budding artists for sure.

Along with the meteorological depictions there are the usual childlike renditions of houses, cars, children playing and other things you used to draw as a child. I started noticing a commonality in the drawings. In most drawings there is a pig. The pig is usually pink.

I never sent artwork to a television station. I do remember drawing stuff in that ancient time of my childhood. I don’t remember drawing lots of animals. I think most of what I drew were houses and cars. And being a child of the 1960’s there were lots of rockets and space capsules. I know for sure; I drew no pig.

What is this sudden childhood fascination with pigs?

I asked Google.

I was introduced to Peppa Pig, which is a British preschool animated television series. The series began in 2004 and is still in production. So that would explain the sudden appearance of a pig in the children’s artwork.

I was thinking about it because this morning’s artwork showed a tornado with trees and the pig flying off into the sky. The pig is sometimes on the ground, sometime airborne depending on the weather being illustrated. Of course, you know that the phrase “when pigs fly” is an adynaton, a figure of speech so hyperbolic that it describes an impossibility.

Peppa Pig must be a thing with the children today. I long for the good ole days of the Coyote trying to do in the Road Runner, which is another article though.

American kids are binge-watching so much of Peppa Pig that they are developing English accents and even using words like “telly” and “ready, steady, go.” The children have learned to imitate Peppa Pig.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then as Jesus followers who are we imitating? The Apostle Paul was so brash he told the Corinthians to “imitate me.” What would someone learn about Jesus by imitating you?

Doug de Graffenried is Pastor of Trinity Methodist Church in Ruston, Louisiana.