Don't feed the ego of the
hands that bite you
I was so happy last week when my son Jack, 4, brought home a new piece of artwork.
Neither myself nor my wife Katherine can draw or paint for nuts.
We gave Jack all sorts of really good genes but I did not think artistic flair was among them.
"Wow, just look at that," I said proudly, when Jack produced the new work of art from his childcare satchel.
It was an impression of his little hands.
You probably remember doing something similar in your earliest art classes.
You dip your little hands into a bucket of paint and then place them on a clean piece of paper.
Jack's impression was particularly wonderful. I marvelled at the range of colours two hands could leave - red, blue, yellow and green - and wondered how the heck he did it. No smudges either. Such wondrous lack of movement. It certainly was a huge leap forward from the first set of hands he brought home from childcare two years ago. They were much smaller and not nearly as flamboyant.
But then, we have seen a real progression in Jack's artwork.
He has gone from producing works of non-descript blobs of brown paint to simple landscapes with yellow suns and green flourishes approximating trees and drain pipes.
He has painted mummy and daddy too, though I thought we both looked a bit green and drain-pipeish.
"Where will I hang this?" I said, flitting around the kitchen with Jack's new handywork, trying to find the best light to show it off.
"Over here? No, what about here?"
In the end we settled for the fridge, so I could sit and admire it easily from our breakfast bench each day.
And I have made other people admire it, too.
No one, and I mean no one, has been allowed to set foot in our kitchen without making obligatory 'oohs' and 'ahhs' about the quality of the work of my son the budding artist.
For some reason, I gazed at it more closely this morning than usual.
That is when I saw the name on it.
It should have said 'Jack', like his other artwork, but it did not.
It had someone else's name on it!
Damn, he had brought home the wrong one.
Either that, or the teacher had forged someone else's name on to Jack's masterpiece.
©September 26, 2000 John Martin. All Rights Reserved
NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it
Australian writer John Martin looks at the funny side of parenting in My Son Jack
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