Now I write and such, but honestly, since elementary school everything’s felt like it was downhill.
See one day, back in said elementary school, my art teacher rose from his desk and approached the front of the classroom, like he usually did, and majestically held up this plastic-cased gem-encrusted Disney’s Peter Pan pen like it was Excalibur, like he didn’t. I somehow paid attention long enough to hear him tell us how it was, along with top marks, to be top prize in a mandatory art contest he’d enlisted every single one of us little soldiers in.
Little ironic eight year-old me figured if I was going to be forced to do this thing, it would be great if I did something, ironic. So finding only pencils, safety-scissors, glue, and books of blank variously coloured papers around me, I decided to ironically trace/trap scissors on papers, to then cut out scissors using scissors, and to finally overlay and glue all the variously coloured cut-out scissors in a small collage. Needing a title I labelled the collage ‘The Crowd / People,’ figuring if the cut out safety-scissors were metaphorically people then I’d just cut people with safety-scissors.
Long story short, I went home with a Disney pen. And later found myself, in an appropriately small tux, with my mom, at a crowded kids’ art gala where my so-called artwork was being featured. And while in that crowded place with my mom, while a woman gushed to her about how deep cutting my art piece was, how I’d captured how we’re all by our nature dangerous but mostly harmless, I couldn’t help but think, master irony level unlocked.
… I peaked at eight.