[[ WARNING: Hey there. Watch out. This post contains the kind of graphic (literally) violence, gore, and bloodshed that only a well-adjusted, action-loving, horror-movie-watching fifteen year old can produce. Consider yourself warned. ]]
Okay, so here's the thing. If my daily behaviour as a youth in America's high schools appears in any child these days, that child will likely be expelled. And the thing? That thing I mentioned when I said, "Here's the thing"? The thing is: I was a good kid.
What was the problem then? I liked to draw. What? Surely that is not enough to merit expulsion. True enough. There is a caveat. I liked to draw what kids my age and of a typical disposition might like to draw if they had the ability. Okay, well, no. I didn't draw boobs. Because, well, I figured that would a) get me in trouble, and b) give me the title and distinction of Class Perv (something that, astonishingly enough, was not a distinction I cared to cultivate). What I did draw (as alluded to in the last post) were gunfights and scenes of mayhem.
The plain fact of the matter is that everyday and in every class (save for P.E., alas), I, in my authority as the artist, killed by the fistful. I was lord over a domain of death. Not only did I engage my doodles in simple firefights, but I subjected my creations to beheadings, impalements, internal combustion, acids, and, well, squirshings. Among other fates. This was partly because I found that drawing things I would hopefully never see was adventurous and partly because my classmates egged me on, cheering the imaginative ways in which I brought to a close the lives of two dimensional persons.
There was nothing wrong with me. I was a quiet, well-adjusted kid who was both good-natured and friendly (if a bit shy). I mean, sure I occasionally wore a bathrobe to school and sometimes wore all flannel because I knew how atrocious a decision that would be. Still, I grasped full-well that the drawings I created bore no import in the world of flesh and of blood. They were not worlds in which I immersed myself in order to escape from the tortures of a world that was too cruel to me (i.e., the real world*). I did not harbour secret desires to slaughter the jocks, make the cheerleaders pray to me before I drown them in a hail of gunfire, hog-tie the rich kids in overtly homo-erotic poses in order to shame them forever. There wasn't really anyone at school I didn't like.
Well, maybe the fat kid. I was, after all, still a kid.
For some reason, though, nowadays teachers and principles and authorities have been taught that violent games or stories or drawings are a critical first sign that a kid is gonna go wrong. That he is gonna take the Harris/Klebold route to fame and a messy exit. I'm not sure I know what happens to us. When do we cross the line from kids to reactionary adults who just really don't at all remember what it was like. Does this happen when we become parents? Is that when we stop remembering that kids aren't completely stupid (even if they act like it), that they can handle the things in the dark as well or sometimes better than we can?
I don't know why that is, but here is my evidence to you. I am a variously hard-worker in a respectable profession. I treat people who are different from me with respect (except for when I'm poking fun at them). I love my family. I love my friends. I work for a non-profit organization. I volunteer to work with children. I read books. I even sometimes understand them. I sing songs in the shower. I want a dog (maybe a Welsh Corgi). I drive an environmentally friendly vehicle. I don't like poetry. I think I'd make a good father. I've only been in one fight (juniour high and it was a wrestling fight not a fist fight). I'm patient and easy-going. I'm not violent (though I play at it when frisky). I would never join the military by choice. And these are a small sampling of the stuff I would draw daily in Math, English, and History (and of course, you may click on the below images to see the whole thing):
IBM presents: You Make the Call! What's the verdict? Should I be locked up as a potential killer? Was I only a step away from massacring untold tens of students and a teacher or three? Personally, I am far beyond dubious that such would be the case.
*NOTE: though not the MTV version - which hadn't come out yet - I full-well support those who create imaginary worlds in order to escape "reality" television.
Labels: doodles, life, robot apocalypse, social issues, terrorism
