Wednesday Story

Once upon a time I was a senior in high school. I had fulfilled most of my required courses, so I was able to take a host of easy “blow off” classes. So easy that my dad would ask me at night “How were Paper Mache and Sandbox today?” These classes included Study Hall, Yearbook, Remedial Math for Dummies, Student Government, and Introduction to Art. Now an outsider might ask “how the hell do you take Student Government as a class?” And the answer would be the same as for “how the hell do you take Yearbook as a class?” Answer: someone brilliant came up with this idea so we wouldn’t have to stay after school to be in these clubs. We got credits to graduate and passes to get out of school early to eat at Subway, er I mean sell Yearbook ads. I love that person wherever they are. But back to Introduction to Art which is what today’s story is about. No Alicia, this isn’t the story about the time I spilled yellow tempera paint all over myself and had to change into a dirty, wrinkled t-shirt and shorts that were in my trunk, and wear them all day when it was around 50 degrees outside. This story is the one where we had to draw self portraits. This was a freshman level class. I consider myself crafty, but not so talented in the drawing and painting department, so I was getting by. I wasn’t going to win any prizes, but I would probably pull off a B. Fortunately Alicia sat next to me and we made jokes and sang songs about art, and didn’t really give a shit how the class went because we were bound for Community College, and we felt like Mr. Beckett was pretty lucky that we even came to class that day. So about the self portraits. This was done by holding a compact mirror in one hand and drawing a picture of your face with the other hand. I swear to God I think I could have taken A.P. Chemistry and had an easier assignment. One morning we were sitting around waiting for Mr. Beckett to pass out the unfinished portraits and I saw that mine was on top. Since our table was closest to his desk I heard him say “Who is that?” when he picked mine up. His face turned red when he realized I had just heard him, and my face turned red because I couldn’t even do the work of a freshman. I failed to capture my essence on paper in even a marginally recognizable way. The sad thing is that I thought it looked just like me. That was probably the day I decided I would major in Liberal Arts when I got to Community College, because I already knew math was out, and I obviously had no future in Fine Arts either.

The End.