'Waffles and Cheese': Ridgedale student national finalist in Google Doodle contest
May 20—OK, let's just get this out there, quick: Kelly Meadows is a weird kid.
Not weird-weird, mind you.
Kelly, as all who know her will attest, trends more toward creative-visionary weird.
The kind of weird that might make a person say, "You know, I never really thought about it that way before."
In other words, good-weird.
"Yeah, she's definitely fun to watch, " mom Catlin Herway Meadows said of her daughter, a fifth-grader at Ridgedale Elementary School.
"She's always got an interesting spin and perspective."
And, if it works out, hundreds of millions of people will soon get to see Kelly's glorious weirdness on display every day, by way of Google.
She's the West Virginia winner in the annual "Doodle for Google " competition for young artists, from elementary school to high school.
You know the Google Doodle—even if you don't.
The Doodles are those little drawings and other design elements incorporated into the logo of the popular search engine.
Artistic homages, they are—off-the-wall and sincere—acknowledging athletes, scientists, statesmen and the historical events that are all part of the social fabric.
This year's contest, which drew entries from all across the U.S. and its territories, took on the human condition.
Artists were asked to respond to the prompt, "I am grateful for ..." in their Doodle drawings.
For Kelly, that was easy.
"This Doodle, " she wrote in the required essay for the contest, "will hopefully show people that it's OK to be different and like, or love, weird stuff."
To prove her artistic point, she did a Doodle featuring Waffles, her favorite gal-pal, going for their mutually favorite snack.
Cheese, in this case.
Waffles, for the record, is an American blue-hood rat—yes, rat—but the not the sewer-dwelling, urban nightmare kind.
With her big eyes and open expression, Waffles is right out of Disney or Pixar.
Kelly depicts her friend poking her head through one of the O's in Google, which she rendered in cheese for her entry, entitled, "Waffles and Cheese."
"When people think about rats, they don't think about rats like Waffles, " the artist said.
Which makes her mom smile.
Caitlin was a classroom teacher for years before breaking to launch her PreK-HerWay operation, a small group, homeschool-type endeavor for the pre-kindergarten set that offers a host of hands-on learning activities.
Kelly, who is thinking about becoming a scientist or an artist—or both—warms to the home environment that is an extension of her school life at Ridgedale.
There are all those scientific experiments on her time, and those creative gifts that she's known for, such as the Super Mario Bros. chandelier she made for her brother and the guitar-playing bobblehead she crafted for her dad.
Ridgedale Elementary let the Google Doodle artist know she made the finals in a surprise ceremony at the school on Goshen Road.
"I was yelling and crying, " Kelly said. "I couldn't believe it."
The grand prize winner takes home a $30, 000 college scholarship, with another $50, 000 prize going to their school, to establish or improve a computer lab or a technology program.
Visit https://doodles.google.com /d4g / to view Caitlin's entry and to vote online. The voting closes Thursday.
Kelly is glad she and Waffles have made it this far.
And she wants you to make it weird your way—if you haven't already.
"It's OK to be 'you.'"
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