Pieter de Hooch, Dutch
“Good Timing, Young Lady. You Caught Me on My Cheat Day. Let Me Have Two Boxes of Thin Mints, Three Boxes of Samoas…Actually, You Know What? Why Don’t You Just Have Your Mom Back Her Truck Up To My Door?,” ca. 1663
Oil on canvas
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Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here (archived if necessary), here, here, here, here (archived if necessary), here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, here, here, here, here (archived if necessary), here, here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated French Wikipedia page has more).
/// Katje speaks to A Boy Bringing Bread
(freshly baked while she slept in her bed).
She leaned down to inform
him the bread isn’t warm.
Now she’d rather have waffles instead.
/// Pre-teen Joost would be filled with despair
that because of his clothes and long hair,
when today’s viewers see
him they think he’s a she.
Time to get some long trousers to wear.
/// A delivery boy must be fast.
Move too slowly, your job will not last.
Stopped to talk to a pal
as they crossed the canal.
He’ll regret the half hour which had passed.
/// He speeds quickly to Katje’s front door
with the basket he’d brought from the store.
Fails to reheat her buns
in the sun as he runs;
time to turn on the tears and implore.
/// Young Joost doesn’t like being a faker,
but his mother now sleeps with the baker.
This could spark things momentous,
(like to be an apprentice),
but Joost’s screw-ups will make him forsake her.
/// Joost’s plump mother is lucky she found
for a lover this baker renowned.
For her favors he pleaded,
and she loved being kneaded.
Now she’s rolling in dough, growing round.
/// Now, it’s true she might yet earn his hate,
should she suddenly start losing weight.
He craved women with heft.
They would all be bereft
if she ever stopped cleaning her plate.
/// But the odds were unlikely of that.
Joost’s large mother enjoyed getting fat.
She consumed heaping plates
full of carbohydrates,
and cake icing devoured by the vat.
/// Joost is lucky that Katje took pity
when he blubbered, “you’re kind and you’re pretty.”
He would bring her, he said,
warm and fresh daily bread
at a discount price— best in the city.
/// Meanwhile, Katje was left at her door
with a batch of cold buns, and what’s more,
all her beer has gone stale.
Looks like breakfast’s a fail.
No more cheese since the morning before.