What’s Your Go-To Doodle?

Today Kelsey wrote about the recent discovery that a person who lived more than 1,000 years ago, believed to have been an educated woman named Eadberg, scratched her name and initials into an important manuscript many times.

“There could have been some reverence for the text, which meant the person who wrote her name was trying not to detract from the scripture or compete with the word of God," Jessica Hodgkinson, the researcher who made the discovery told The Guardian.

Eadberg, she said, also drew little pictures on some of the pages:

Hodgkinson, the article said, "hopes further study will reveal the meanings of these figures," which the article calls "tiny, rough drawings of figures." Otherwise known, perhaps, as doodles. Just look at these little guys!

I love these proto-minion-ass figures, not only because they're cute but because they're a reminder that the urge to draw little guys is one of the most primal human urges. As Hodgkins said, "Still, to this day, there’s this human urge to leave a mark of your presence on something that is meaningful to you or is a record of where you’ve been."

If, thousands of years into the future, researchers were to find my mark left on something, they would find terrible horse drawings. My equine doodles, remnants of a horse-obsessed childhood (my efforts to manifest a horse for myself by drawing them did not work), are basically reflexive at this point. If I have a pen, a few blank spots of paper, and any phone call, I will produce the horses. (I usually just doodle the heads.) I asked my Defector comrades about their doodles. Ley draws spirals. Kelsey draws neat patterns. Roth doodles triangles next to each other. Kathryn's real-life classroom doodles are very nice. Patrick doodles flat cat.

What's your go-to doodle?