AJF Conversations

by Tom Shafer

Updated February 27, 2020

So, my niece Audrey is quite the not-so-little artist (she’s about 5’7), and you’ve already seen some of her skills in this blog (check out her Krampus drawing on my “Krampus Mania!” page). But recently, she had some time to kill because winter reared its ugly head here in Ohio with frigid, below zero temperatures and moderate snowfall, and practically every school in our area was closed for three days. Between naps and regular sleep — oh, and food — she managed to create some very cute, conversational art panels that I like to call AJF — Art Just for Fun.

Now, before you start in with the “it should be AJFF or AJ2F” technicality, remember, I am a trained practitioner in the language arts, and prepositions like “for” don’t have to be recognized when creating an acronym. Would FBI be as feared if it were FBOI, as in, “Freeze, sucker, FBOI!! Drop that waffle!!”? I think not. Frankly, the acronym for President of the United States is incorrect. Some love to throw around the POTUS tag, as in “POTUS has left the building.” Grammatically speaking, it should be PUS, as in “PUS has left the building.” For the current holder of the office, this is a more accurate descriptor. And before you start demanding AJF², well, I’m a nearly trained practitioner of the engineering arts (a few courses short of a systems engineering degree), and my matriculation tells me the two F’s are not being squared, they are merely being doubled — so the 2F is technically correct, but also technically stupid.

Anyway, with my niece’s permission, I have posted a few of her “conversations” for you to enjoy. I will periodically change them so she can share new material — and so I can sprinkle my pages with some refinement and whimsy.

Oh, and one last thing: I also wanted to call her works “AJF Conversations” because those happen to be the initials for her name. Now you know the rest of the story . . .

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