My Love Affair with Pink Pearl

I was just posting some documents for work when I had a flashback to eighth grade (the best kind of flashback, let me tell you). My health class (no, it's not that kind of story) often transitioned classrooms due to a lack of space, and I suppose it never really mattered -- film strips featuring cartoonish Henry the Herpes Virus play successfully on just about any whiteboard in town. The memory isn't so much about herpes (thank God) as it is about my obsession with doodling. My mind wonders quite often, although I try to hide it by yelling "I UNDERSTAND COMPLETELY" whenever someone catches me off guard. Well, in middle school, I would lose myself in odd little drawings.

I was never very good -- I would more often doodle my name in eighteen different invented fonts than practice something possibly lucrative like spiderman. But on this one health class occasion, I was out of paper. No one could spare a square, it seemed, for me to doodle, so I did what I had to do -- I scribbled straight on the desk itself.

And what a masterpiece it was -- I opted this time (from some unknown muse that probably would have worried my dad) to draw a muscleman. He was a sight -- oversized muscles, heroic pose, smiles copied from the ninja turtles (kind of an oval with a line jutting to the right, then gridwork teeth). In a short twenty minutes I had created life upon this desk, and when the period was over, how could I be expected to erase it? I stared down at my creation -- there was no way to take muscleman with me, and yet, I couldn't bring myself to destroy him. To be honest, it would've taken me longer to erase him than I could have afforded -- the class was over and lunch waits for no man.

So I grabbed my books and hit the hallway, never thinking twice.

Well, the following day, same health class time, same health class channel, the teacher who "owned" our temporary classroom space pulled me to the side. I'll never forget this -- he asked me "Are you the artist?"

Well, desperate for attention and seeking positive reinforcement for my creative output, I answered with a resounding "Yes!"

This obviously caught the teacher offguard -- he had expected the usual middle school denial / detention routine. He said nothing, handed me the ol' big pink eraser and pointed to my desk. There sat muscleman, still smiling in the face of utter doom. My heart sank -- he wasn't interested in my artwork! He was pissed cause I doodled all over one of his desks. I wasn't really a troublemaker, either, so not only did I have to destroy my creation but I also had the stomach churning guilt of upsetting someone in authority.

I erased the muscleman; nubs of black pink eraser filled my desk. That kinda sounds like a haiku...let's see...

I erased muscleman
pink black nubs filled my desk top
do not doodle, son