Baggage Central

So, this week has been filled with family catch-up time. This afternoon I & my sister took her kids (3-yr-old twins + 8-month-old girl) to one of those epic fun palaces.

Which, it turned out, had a paint-your-own-pottery section. Well, colour me happy.

It started out just fine. The kids are painting duckies, pretty content. [The background: in Devon Music Service our big credo (cadged from some minister) was that every child has the ability to be uniquely musical; these days I mention 'unique' whenever the kidlets are painting/singing/whatever and worried that they're not as good as the other.] So, the kids are painting their own ducks in their own unique way, very happily, and my sister & I start painting our own things.

And the childhood baggage is delivered without delay.

[Grown adult freezes] "I made a mistake." [Looks up shamefacedly]

[Other grown adult freezes] "I did it wrong." [Looks up guiltily]

Oh good. The very idea that art can be wrong...

And it got worse. Because the kidlets finished up and went off to play, leaving the two of us, looking at the most un-aesthetically pleasing ducks ever.

The Pottery Overseer comes over to see how we're doing. I ask: 'If we were to... ahem... repaint the kids' ducks, would that make us bad people?'

She looks at the ducks (which started off as baby blue or pink, but were soon slashed with black and grey).

I voice my (secondary) concern that if an art therapist ever saw them, the conclusion would be they were painted by sociopaths.

The Overseer cocks her head, considers this. 'I'd say more multiple personality syndrome.' She reaches a decision. 'I can get these ducks back to blank in five minutes.'


And so while the kids played, the unique slashed-through ducks were transformed into sunshiney happy ducklings, just like all the others. Sigh.

[And in other news, I have tickets for the Munster-Leinster rugby match on Saturday in Croker. And right now, my three-year-old nephew is out the back proclaiming "I'm Ronan O'Gara!!!" Roll on Saturday :-)]