I, Flaubert, and Leonardo

Of course everyone wants to hear about my relationship with Leonardo. He and I were besties even though he spent way too much time drawing stupid war machines and flying devices in his notebooks. I would roll over on my back and say “pat my tummy” and he would brush his long hair back from his face and grunt, “No, I’m busy inventing helicopters.” And I would say, “who needs helicopters?” And of course he couldn’t tell me because in those days they didn’t even have gasoline for helicopters so even if they built one no one could fly it. As smart as Leo was he never thought of crap like this, yet nowadays people celebrate him for being a genius.

Really Leo was of pretty average intelligence, overall, but he had this weird condition that caused him to write backwards and I could never train him out of it. What was annoying about it was that it also caused him to pat my tummy against the lay of my hair and it left my tummy hair in disarray which let me tell you is uncomfortable in the extreme. So even though it was my Dhog dhuty  to let him pat my tummy I can’t say I really loved it the way one is supposed to and I even guiltily on occasion found myself slinking away from him on the rare occasions he looked up from the parchment he was always scribbling on and raised an idle hand for tummy patting.