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Artistic Alienation Across the Generations
A month or so after my 6-yr-old Katie moved from Florida to Portland in the summer of 2004, I went to Powell's in search of something fun for her to read. I came across Lil' Lit and thought, AHA! Comics and fairy tales! She'll love it! And so she did.
And so, apparently, do her classmates. Especially Page 7. Infamous Page 7. There, in a story about a king who has lost his marbles (figuratively, that is), the mad king runs amok without his pants, revealing his cartoonish butt. BUTT! An Art Spiegelman butt. But a butt nonetheless. This proved disruptive to 2nd grade group reading sessions. The teacher's attempt to apprehend the offending text so that literacy building activities could resume was met with fierce resistence from my (now 7-yr-old) niece, an independent spirit gifted with uncommon stubborness. Hence her second trip in as many weeks to the Principal's office. (The previous incident also involved mutiny in the reading group.) And another call to Arleen (aka, Grandma). And another trip to school to figure out Katie's behavior.
For awhile during dinner yesterday, as much of this was related to me in disjunctive bits, it was pretty clear that Katie blamed me for getting her in trouble. And for a brief moment, while still seething with embarrassment and annoyance (and concern for Katie), so did Grandma. And during that moment, I confess I felt a secret sense of pride: Yes, I have corrupted the youth! Get me the hemlock and a strapping young scribe. But the glorious ignominy didn't last forever. Grandma soon realized that Katie's teacher is a "prig."
Well...duh.
O, bravo! Well done, Katie!
I was so amused by this that I read it out loud to my dear wife, who is currently going through old magazines for some reason or other. She was vastly amused.
Get used to being blamed in this manner, though. It seems that kids universally blame the old'uns for all thier ills. Though *I* certainly don't remember being that way (naturally).