The highlight of Back to School Night was the moment I was sitting at Christian’s desk, listening to his teacher talk about her ideas and plans for the year, and noticed the picture he had lovingly drawn and left for me.
It took a minute to figure out that it was a portrait of Ryan and me. (I only figured this out by looking at the other kids’ desks and their portraits of very happy parents sitting on beaches, underneath trees, and in front of houses.)
The border was nice, just like the other kids’ pictures, and the color scheme was good. However, there was one key difference between Christian’s picture and the others. The other kids’ parents were WEARING CLOTHES!!!
When this occured to me, when it really sank in, I could feel my eyes bulging out of my head at the paper, searching for some sign that I had missed a pair of dockers and a nice sweater set and string of pearls somewhere. When I couldn’t find them, I began scanning for anatomy and was somewhat relieved to find that we were just vague peach and tan figures, proudly nude on our son’s third grade desk.
I took the picture with me when we were dismissed, shoved it behind the other papers and quickly thanked his teacher for her time. When I got home, I planned to calmly take Christian into the living room and ask him about the picture, and then explain that (even though we constantly walk around the house naked) it’s important that he draw us with clothes on for any future school projects.
“ARE WE NAKED IN THIS PICTURE?” I asked when I walked in the door and saw him in the kitchen.
He looked at me with a puzzled frown.
“No.”
“It looks like we don’t have any clothes on,” I said.
“You don’t like my picture?” he said.
Woops.
“It’s a great picture. I really do like it. My hair looks great, I love the border, and overall it’s just a great picture. But why didn’t you draw any clothes?”
“I’m not very good at drawing clothes.”
“Then draw bad clothes next time. Please.”
When Ryan got home that night, I told him the story and asked the man with the psychology degree for his analysis of the situation. Keep in mind that this comes with over 10 years of higher education, countless hours of clinical work and case formulation: “Our kid doesn’t like drawing, so he didn’t pick up another color to draw any clothes.”
Yeah, right. And to think he’s supposed to graduate next year…
