Doodle-What?

How did we come up with our name?  Let me tell you a little story.  I made the dean’s list my first semester in college.  To reward such a feat, my dad gifted me a Walkman.  For those of you who are not Gen-Xers or older, a Walkman was a portable audio player for cassette tapes.   And if you don’t know what cassette tapes are, Google it. I wonder if they will ever make a come back the way vinyl records did…

I digress. The gift I received from my dad came with a sticky note in the shape of an elephant, congratulating me on making the dean’s list.  On the right side of the sticky note, along the elephant’s head and trunk, he wrote a made-up word, dumpkinphant.  Dad was always making up words and nicknames, none of which made any sense to anyone but himself.  This time, though, I knew what he meant.  

For years Dad called his three daughters his “dumpkin doodles,” a term of endearment understood only by the four of us.  When he said it in public, inevitably whoever heard it would ask if Dad was calling us his dunkin donuts.  We would try to explain, but most of the time people were left scratching their heads in confusion.  

I don’t know what happened to the Walkman, but I still have the sticky note.  It reappears every time we reshuffle life around.  Or when we move and I have to throw out what is unnecessary to keep.  When I see it, it still puts a smile on my face.

Now back to DoodlePhant.  We began with the idea to convert doodles into designs to adorn a card or poster, and perhaps evoke a smile or two.   After brainstorming ideas for a company name we came up with DoodlePhant.  I either heard or read somewhere that elephants are great artists.  But just in case, our art is human, and we are not charging millions.