today my aunt and her extensive 4-kid family came to visit. of the 4 kids, 2 were girls. one was 11 and the other probably 4 or 5 years old. they were both really vain. they came into my bedroom (which, because of childhoon deprivation, i had decorated into a victorian lady's boudoir) oohing and ahing at my vast collection of shiny trinkets, my dresser full of ladies' stuff like cosmetics, and my vintage victorian vanity table.
the girls tried on my necklaces and bangles, held my earrings up to their ears, swathed themselves in my heavy damask drapes, and pretended they were princesses. i was hoping they wouldn't break anything, or rip a hole in my curtains, but i let them play dress-up. i drew the line when they wanted to try on my makeup, because i knew that my Chanel lippies and Christian Dior eyeshadows were not going to survive. i also drew the line when they wanted to paint my face and make me into their giant living doll.
hoping to distract them from my 'treasures', i showed them my sketchbook and let them draw in it. i lent them my glittery pens and colorful markers, and then went to work on my SEP application. they sat around my piano chair, diligently drawing, and occasionally squabbling over who would get to use the pink glitter pen.
then it was time for dinner, and we were all eating out, so we filed out and into our respective vehicles. dinner was largely uneventful. we returned and again the girls went back to drawing and wrecking my sketchbook. i settled to watch a rerun of Dae Jang Geum, and during one of the commercial breaks my aunt and uncle decided it was time to bring their brood home, so the girls carefully returned my pens and my sketchbook to my desk and went home. i forgot about the sketchbook.
until fifteen minutes ago.
i noticed it on my desk and flipped to see what they had drawn.
page 1: a drawing of Ariel, the little mermaid, who sporting big caberet neon orange hair, a neon green tail and a glittering pink bikini top. her skin was computer paper white. a little eerie, but well-proportioned. younger girl added incoherent scribbles at the bottom, meant to represent the rocks at the ocean bottom.
page 2: a huge mess of scribbles with glittery pens and markers. a big greeting "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!*" and a footnote "*even though it's not your birthday". random doodles of a birthday cake and a stick figure girl exclaiming, "YES!". on closer inspection, there's a little message saying "TO: PIE WEN JIE JIE, SHE MUST: EAT CAKE". i laughed at the misspelling of my name.
page 3: an extremely unflattering portrait of "BEATIFUL PIE WEN JIE JIE", in which i have droopy eyes and a huge smiling mouth. i sport neon pink eyeshadow and purple eyeliner, and blood red blush on my cheeks and nose. hilariously, i have neon pink lips and silver lipliner. again, neon orange hair, and a shirt with a print consisting of neon green circles, blue stripes and neon orange scribbles. i just noticed that the girls traced my eyes with blue sparkly pen, a la Shiseido Maquillage circa 2005.
page 4: a pen drawing of a ballerina with one enormously long arm, and pointe shoes laced all the way to the knee, rather like a roman hooker. below roman hooker ballerina is another ballerina performing a split. she has a thought bubble that says: "I'M DISABED" and has a little doodle of a person in crutches next to it.
page 5: unfinished drawing of a side profile of a woman with impossibly protruding lips applying lipstick, and...strangely enough, salivating at the same time. probably they were drawing this when told to go home, because at the bottom of the page is a little message: "THANK YOU!!" and next to it, a little misshapened smiley face.
for some reason, i feel really proud of them. i think they are going to turn out all right. i mean...the drawing of the "disabed" ballerina, complete with little person in crutches, that's truly the work of a young genius. and anyway, i'm much luckier than my brother. he has to entertain the other 2 boys, and they spent most of the time terrorizing his hamsters.
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1 comment:
You could have been Marilyn Manson
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