At grad class we are doing one of my favorite activities to
throw at the kids: Shut up and color. My professor doesn't call it Shut Up and Color, but that's
essentially what we're doing.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of activity that clues my classmates in
to just how twisted, warped, and depraved I truly am, so after we Shut Up and Color, I'm probably going to
want to do the No One Can See Me Duck and
Cover defensive maneuver.
Let me start at the
beginning.
We have a young adult novel assigned to us. It's a book that has very little plot,
nothing really happens, and the ending jumps ahead fifteen years without any
explanation whatsoever. Characters are
introduced by name, dozens of them, only to have these characters disappear
from the remainder of the book. There
are so many holes in this book that a fully-loaded pellet gun couldn't have
done a finer job. In short, the book is
packed with pretentious, purple prose juxtaposed with the theme of death, all
death, nothing but death -- the earth dies, crops die, people die, whales die,
birds die, and the storyline commits massive hari-kari by the fifth chapter. It is a story about what happens if Earth's
rotation slows down so much that days are 60 hours long and everything,
absolutely everything except most of the people, amazingly enough, dies.
In simplest terms, I
hate it.
Our job for this class is to redesign the cover. Right now the book has a standard cover with
a silhouetted face. You know, like the
cover of so many other disenfranchised young adult novels (Things Not Seen, Speak …) We
have our crayons, markers, and our colored pencils (I brought along a dozen
sharpened pencils), and we're ready. I
even charged myself up with an iced coffee.
We are about five minutes into the activity when I look
around at my own group, peeking over the protective arms they flung to block
others' views. I see sunshine, phases of
the moon, and all kinds of positive imagery.
I peek down at my own paper.
Uh-Oh.
My newly redesigned cover idea is desolate. It's warped.
It has tints of blood-color in it.
There is a dead bird front and center, and the only thing green on the
cover is the warped-from-the-sun house.
The professor is making the rounds, oohing and aaahing and
saying wonderful commentary to the others.
Until she gets to mine, that is.
She stands behind me, wringing her hands but with the slightest hint of
amusement. "Oh," she smirks,
"What are we going to do with you?
I can't wait to hear you explain this one."
Let me be the first to admit that I'm no artist. I want that out there right away. It seems that I am also the only student in
the room who took such a bleak and dismal outlook on the story itself. When it's my turn to defend my artistic
choices, I spiel off some bullshit about not including people, leaving the
green only for the wooden, non-living structure, and how there is a tinge of blood-red
to almost everything. Folks, that's not
because I'm brilliant; it's because I only brought along twelve colored pencils
and one of them is uselessly white.
The class votes on the best newly redesigned cover, and mine
doesn't even make it out of my tiny group.
Our top three covers turn out to be hopeful, colorful, cheery
masterpieces. Then there's mine that
floats around the fringe like a fungus.
We rename the book, too, from The Age of Miracles to such things as To Kill All the Mockingbirds, I Know Why the Caged Bird Doesn't Sing,
The Sun Also Rises … Eventually. Our
titles are irreverent, humorous, dark.
But none so dark as my drawing, which gives me a nice, warm, grisly,
somewhat creepy feeling inside.
Apparently I don't feel too guilty about it either because I
sleep like the dead when I get home, as if the whole world is slowing down,
spinning endlessly but with such prolonged rotation that I feel as if I sleep
for days. I guess nothing warms my heart
like a novel about desolation, death, and destruction.
Hmmmm…. Sounds like another good topic for a redesign. See ya later, folks, I've got to get myself
ready for a day with the kiddos. I can't
wait to tell them that I've gone completely to the dark side.
Now Shut Up and Color!
