My Daughter and I have matching tattoos of Lowly Worm, a Richard Scary character that she & I both grew up with.
It really didn’t strike me until after we got the tattoos: Lowly is hard to explain.
The thing I like about the Richard Scary books is how charmingly absurd they are. The busy, busy world is populated with huge-pupiled animals doing normal human things. Well, normal-ish things. Like driving a pickle car.
And Lowly? He’s on almost every page – an omniscient spectator. It never occurred to me that he’d be anything other than a happy, Tyrolean hat wearing mensch.
Until I started explaining to curious strangers that the skateboard riding worm on my leg is named ‘Lowly’.
He’s not lowly at all! If anything Lowly is the king of What do people do all day and Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. Lowly is where all the action is, patiently observing and narrating all of Scary’s animal absurdity.
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