Art

September 02, 2010

Why do I remember this stuff so clearly?

This one comes from my kindergarten days. (1958?) Okay, it might have been first grade, but definitely no later than that. This is creative nonfiction going on here. Give me some space.

One day the teacher set up several painting easels back in the cloak room. It was about the size of a small kitchen. She’d cleared out all the coats and anything else that might get destroyed by errant paint. At the bottom of each easel were a series of large holes in a flat board that held bottles of paint – probably four or five colors. My class took turns painting throughout the day. Each kid got a chance with his own easel, all to himself, a blank sheet of paper, to paint anything he wanted.

She said that she would give extra points for originality, and that art was all about originality. I had a really great idea of what I was going to paint. It was unique and personal. It was special to me and I was confident that the teacher was going to be impressed with my painting. I was pretty sure that no one in the class knew how to do what I knew how to do. I really looked forward to my turn.

No doubt I worked really hard at it. I was fairly sure I had every line down perfectly. There were a couple foggy spots, but mostly it was an accurate depiction. I was really proud of the accuracy of the picture and knew it would impress the teacher.

When our time was up the teacher went around the perimeter of the cloak room to inspect each of our paintings. I was last in line. The teacher had glowing remarks about each painting she looked at, and my anticipation grew. I knew this was going to be great.

When she finally got to my easel she paused, and finally said,
“Tom, what is that?”

I was confused that she had to ask.
“It’s a map to Grandma and Grandpa Lindberg’s house. See, this box here is my house, and this line is the street. You take this street to the stop sign and turn right on Wolf road. This line here is Wolf road. You take Wolf road until . . .”

She cut me off.
“You drew a map?”

“Yeah! See this green box is the park beside the road, and the blue box inside the green box is the swimming pool inside the park. When you see that you know you are not lost.”

“But Tom, you were supposed to paint a picture!”

I heard a tone of exasperation in her voice and had been in trouble enough times before to know it was time to clam up. Arguing with authority figures usually resulted in more trouble. Even so, I was thinking to myself, “You said we could paint anything we wanted!”

She didn’t hear what I was thinking and pulled me over to look at the other kid’s pictures. One was a sunflower that was beautifully done, and I knew I didn’t know how to do that. The next was a colorful fish that was way beyond my stick figure ability. The third was a landscape with all kinds of details beyond my imagination. The teacher went on and on about how wonderful these other pictures were.

By the time we got back around to my easel again I’d decided to leave my personal mute button on. I’d already learned that it didn’t do any good to argue with adults. Adults were bigger than I was, and smarter than I was. I was six and she was ancient. She had power. I had nothing. There was no way to win. I could only make matters worse.

I loved my map. It hurt that she didn’t see how brilliant and beautiful it was. With my map anyone could start at my house and find their way to Grandma and Grandpa Lindberg’s house, or vice versa. No one else in the class had thought to paint a map. There were multiple flower paintings and multiple landscape paintings, but only one map. I wondered why she no longer valued originality, but there was no way I was going to say that out loud. I had thought the teacher was smart, but this was the first chink in her armor. I decided, “If only one kid in the entire class paints a map, and you can’t appreciate it, who is stupid?” I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see that.

“Why didn’t you use more colors?”

I didn’t answer the inquisition. I thought to myself, “Because I only needed two colors. Why would I waste time cleaning the brush in water between colors I didn’t need?

“Why didn’t you paint a picture?

I thought to myself, “Because you said we could paint anything we wanted, and I wanted to paint a map. I wanted to impress you.”

I stonewalled through the remainder of the verbal beating. I refused to cry. I didn’t want her to know she’d hurt me, or could hurt me.

I took my map home and showed it to my mom.

Mom liked it, and gave me a big hug.

Love you Mom.