RE: Trailer Trash, 65 pt 3 (Patreon)

    For the first fifteen minutes of their sixth period Art 2D class the tables were free to quietly socialize while Mr. Peterson occasionally called up specific students to discuss their work—including Amber. From their corner group, only Vanessa was pulled away. Tabitha, Clarissa, Stacy and Eric all surreptitiously peeked over past the other kids to see that their amused teacher appeared to be asking Vanessa to explain why she wasn’t able to finish drawing her still life assignment in a week. The short girl looked on the verge of tears as she tried to muster an explanation—until he finally gave her a long sigh and a nod and waved her back to her table.

    When Vanessa turned away from him her pitiful expression evaporated into thin air with an eye roll and a scowl, and she hurried back to the table to reclaim her bar stool.

    “C minus,” Vanessa huffed. “Just because I didn’t finish drawing like, the one last stupid bottle. Which is totally bogus!”

    “You had a whole week,” Eric said, speechless at her lame excuse. “And, he could tell you were just talking instead of drawing like, the whole damn class every—”

    “Eric, I just got a C minus,” Vanessa held up her hand. “I’m in no mood for your nonsense. Can’t a girl get a little moral support, here? Geez.”

    “Do the rest of us get an A if we didn’t get called up?” Stacy asked with a hopeful smile. “That’d be cool.”

    “Mine wasn’t that good,” Tabitha sighed. “I think it’d be weird if I got an A for it.”

    “That’s not your fault, though!” Vanessa insisted. “It’s not any of our fault if our drawings sucked. He’s supposed to be teaching us how to draw. He didn’t freakin’ teach us anything!”

    “You learn by doing,” Eric argued. “He had us practicing, and that’s the—”

    “Eric,” Vanessa warned. “You’re fixing to get on my last nerve today. I’ve had it up to here with all of your backtalk. Okay? Okay.”

    “My drawing sucked,” Clarissa shrugged. “I thought for sure he was going to call me up.”

    “Yours and mine looked about the same,” Tabitha judged. “Stacy, yours looked a little better than ours, I think. Eric, yours was really good!”

    “Thanks?”

    “Oh, yeah?” Vanessa crossed her arms. “Then what about mine?!”

    “...I found it bold and provocative,” Tabitha teased. “Glasswork in caricature—with unapologetic finesse Vanessa Smith levies her pencil in the fight against the ever-encroaching authoritative norms that suppress artistic integrity! Should students be constrained by cutoffs and deadlines when in the pursuit of true creative expression? Is her artwork non finito an accidental abandonment, or a deliberate and meaningful aesthetic statement?

    “With this unfinished, or some might say interrupted piece, Vanessa brings controversial questions into the light—should her work be interpreted through the lens of her own intent as its author, or instead by established external principles defined by a so-called ‘instructor?’ Her daring lines terminate unexpectedly in blank canvas—perhaps as a scathing commentary on the paradoxical nature of our young, impressionable minds being taught to create art only through the framework of arbitrary, pre-determined criteria for ‘success,’ and a tragically limited window of time within which we must create!”

    What had began as a quick joke somehow morphed into an entire witty monologue as Tabitha saw that her entire table was watching her with huge smiles and rapt attention. Eric and Stacy both broke into genuine laughter before she was able to finish, Clarissa wore a look of stunned surprise for the second time today, and Vanessa was now blushing red. Their reactions were strangely intoxicating for Tabitha, and she couldn’t help but lapse into giggles herself.

    Tabitha had never considered herself any kind of loquacious person—usually there were specific niches within which she could talk with exceptional confidence, and the rest of the time she found herself frustratingly tongue-tied when it mattered. For some uncanny reason here she was able to activate just the right part of her dormant writer-brain and unintentionally became a rather riveting speaker. Deep within the hidden literary machine in her mind a satirical bullshit engine had suddenly spooled up and delivered an entire diatribe before she even realized she had it in her to do so.

    “Hahaha—damn, Tabitha—” Eric wheezed out.

    “Oh my God—!!” Stacy was beside herself.

    “Yes,” Vanessa attempted deadpan delivery. “Like, exactly. Tabitha gets it. That’s exactly what I was going for. Obviously. The whole time.”

    “Oh, obviously!” Stacy laughed, bursting into laughter once again.

    “Glasswork in Caricature,” Eric repeated, doubling over in mirth. “Holy shit.”

    “So uh, whenever we think we might get a bad grade in here, we need to bring Tabitha up to the front desk when he calls us up?” Clarissa suggested with a small grin. “And, she can like—she can say all that. Have a better, um, better…”

    “A more charitable critique?” Tabitha offered.

    “Yeah!” Clarissa said. “Exactly. Because—wow.”

    Giddy with glee over how much they had liked her joke, Tabitha couldn’t help but think that maybe she was actually predisposed towards being outgoing. Sort of. Perhaps most of her life she had simply been applying the wrong parts of herself towards things, falling short, and then allowing herself to freeze up because of those failures. Why was it that in some areas like with her cousins, or with Hannah, with the snarky goth girl at the Hot Topic desk, that Tabitha could be confident and outspoken? While the other times with cheerleaders or Carrie or facing her own parents all of that easy bravado seemed to vanish and the many witty rejoinders she knew she had within her somewhere made themselves scarce. 

    If I can just, I don’t know, Tabitha thought. Figure out how to apply the right parts of me to even the difficult, scary conversations—it’s like I’ll have it all worked out. Need to find a way to mentally recalibrate? To think of all of the people who intimidate me as kids, maybe. I mean, even if I mess up and embarrass myself, so what? I’m still just a kid, too. Right now, at least. It should be no big deal. I mean, obviously it IS a huge deal and I can’t really diminish that for myself because that’s a psychological hill I’m still climbing. Just. Aggh, I don’t know!

    “Alright, alright, pipe down, you animals,” Mr. Peterson hollered, rising up from his desk. “I’ve got in a bunch of preliminary grades for your first week here, and right now you’ll get your one last chance to bump up your score. I’m gonna ask questions, and if you think you’ve got an answer you quietly raise up your hand and wait for me to call upon you. Understood? Outstanding.

    “First up! What did you learn drawing these bottles this past week?”

    A dozen hands shot up, and Mr. Peterson sighed in anticipation as he first selected Eddie—a boy at one of the other tables who was shaping up into something of their class clown.

    “I learned that I suck at drawing?” Eddie didn’t disappoint.

    There was some scattered laughter, but it hewed more towards reacting because Eddie was being intentionally disruptive than because his answer itself was that funny. Still holding the sheaf of collected drawings in his hand, Mr. Peterson used the papers to give the boy a dismissive swipe through the air.

    “Nynnnhhh, I don’t think so,” Their teacher mimicked that negative buzzer noise. “Har-de-har-har, haven’t heard that one a thousand times today already. It’s the same jokes every time I ask that! I learned drawing is hard! I learned I suck! I just learned the assignment was due today, even though I’ve barely done anything! Very funny, people. Next person—you.”

    “I learned that, uh,” The girl Mr. Peterson pointed to floundered when actually being called upon. “That um, that recreating still life portraits… is more challenging than we might have first thought? After trying to actually do it ourselves?”

    “That’s the same dang thing Eddie just said, but in more words, so no,” Mr. Peterson decided with his trademark toothy grin. “How about—you.”

    “I was trying to do mine by lots of shading,” A reedy looking guy answered. “Instead of outlines like it seemed everyone else was doing. So, when you go into doing this like that—you kind of realize that when you express everything through darks, like, through penciling it onto paper, you then have to commit and make the darker parts even darker, until you—”

    “When James turned in his paper it was twice, three times as heavy as the rest of y’all’s papers,” Mr. Peterson chuckled, flipping through the drawings in hand to find a particularly dark one and pulling it out to show the class. “Look at this. Poor kid burnt through what, three or four whole pencils, doing this. A minus.”

    “That’s an A minus?!” Another kid wailed in disbelief. “What the heck?”

    “He did great work, look at the shadows and light,” Mr. Peterson slowly turned so that everyone could see. “In doing so, he also discovered some of the limitations of his number two pencil there, where putting down too much shading starts to make any of the details hard to make out. Those of you who’re the whole way across the room are just gonna see—what? A washed out mess of pencil scribble.”

    From where Tabitha was seated, that was an apt descriptor for what she could see of the kid’s drawing.

    “So! James,” Mr. Peterson challenged. “What could you have done better? Correct answer’ll bump you up to that A plus!”

    “I mean, I tried to go back and uh, like redefine where the edges were, with eraser?” James explained. “And, I liked that effect—it’s uh, like a rim lighting effect, in photography? But I don’t think I erased enough, maybe? There was—”

    “Yeah yeah yeah, okay, is that your final answer?” Mr. Peterson waggled the artwork in question.

    “Uhhh—final answer, I just would have started off with a much much much lighter hand, when I was shading,” James answered. “So that when I did get to the dark areas, I would have more room for darker shading for contrast?”

    “Boom! A plus,” Mr. Peterson slipped the paper back into the stack and bent over his desk to change the grading mark. “Who else can tell me they learned something?”

    Even more hands went up now that it was more clear what Mr. Peterson’s expectations here were, and after a moment of self-evaluation Tabitha also volunteered her slender and cast-free arm up into the air. Mr. Peterson chose several students at random, with one of them giving a meandering response about not knowing what else to do or how to improve once she had all of the bottles outlined, and another citing that he had learned to appreciate defining positive and negative space to recreate three dimensional objects onto a flat sheet of paper.

    To Tabitha’s surprise, after a suspenseful moment of searching the room with his cheshire grin Mr. Peterson turned and pointed right at her.

    “I didn’t spend enough time looking at what I was supposed to be drawing,” Tabitha confessed. “It’s like once the bottles and glassware were in my head, I stopped actually observing them, and started to instead draw my idea of what I thought they looked like, and focus on that. Taking my eyes off of my own drawing and checking the models became an afterthought, an aggravation. Because—the more I drew, the less my drawing adhered to what I was actually supposed to be drawing.”

    “Good! Great!” Mr. Peterson boomed, again taking the time to search through the stack of papers for Tabitha’s sheet. “This is something I saw with not just some of these, but most of these. In still lifes they often say there’s an eighty-twenty rule, where you should be eighty percent of your time observing what you’re drawing, and twenty percent drawing what you’re observing. Tabitha here failed to properly observe what she was drawing, and what happened?”

    To her absolute mortification, when he found her drawing and turned back and forth to display it to the room her childish work earned chuckles and mocking looks from everyone.

    “Her proportions went all wonky!” Mr. Peterson explained. “She looked at it for a little bit, and then drew her idea of it. Most of you did this. You saw a bunch of bottles, and drew that, instead of look look looking at the bottles, and breaking down what those were to observe their specific shape, their height, the contour angles, the positive and negative space they created. But, having recognized her folly, and maybe learned something—we’ll go from a B to a B plus, for Tabitha.”

    “Glasswork, in Caricature~!” Eric sniped under his breath.

    “Wait!” Amber spoke up without being called upon. “That’s totally not even fair. Mine’s not great, yeah, but it looks way better than that whole mess. How do I not get a B?!”

    “Great question—and what did you learn?” Mr. Peterson asked. “What did drawing bottles this week teach you?”

    “That your grading is super unfair,” Amber retorted.

    “And what else?” Mr. Peterson was unphased by her accusation, and if anything his grin only widened.

    “That Tabitha can’t draw for shit,” Amber said.

    “Don’t swear in my classroom young lady, or your C minus will become a D,” Mr. Peterson warned her without breaking stride. “I think what you might take away from this is that for you, instead of even looking at the bottles in front of you, or even your own drawing? You were all caught up in what everyone else around you was drawing—how theirs looked, how they were doing. Who was drawing better than you, who was drawing worse.

    “Now, one can learn a lot through cruel, cruel comparisons—but, did you?” Mr. Peterson asked. “Did that teach you something?”

    “I mean… yeah?” Amber answered.

    “Go on then, tell us,” Mr. Peterson urged her on with a wave of the stack of papers. “Tell us something you learned.”

    “...I don’t freaking know?” Amber finally shrugged. 

    “Better keep your attention on your own work next time, then,” Mr. Peterson advised. “Like several of you—and I’m not gonna name any names, but if I did it might sound a lot like Steven, Christopher, Vanessa,—Amber did not manage to complete her assignment! Despite being given an entire school week to do so! And thus, Amber here receives a C minus. That’s already incredibly merciful and generous on my part, here, folks.

    “Y’all had a whole dang week to scribble out a couple l’il bottles. That goes especially for you, Christopher!” Mr. Peterson pulled a page out from his handful of papers. “I like you, and even I couldn’t even give you a C or a D in good conscience. What is this? Can you explain what it was you were up to, here? And, what you might have learned?”

    “I learned that I am very easily distractible?” Christopher guessed with an uneasy laugh. “Uhhh but no seriously, I actually wasn’t here on Tuesday or Wednesday, so—”

    “Absent some days or not, you drew PART of ONE bottle!” Mr. Peterson waved the drawing in question—an almost completely blank page—around the class. “You’re telling me this is all you got done?! Get up and go sit at the kiddy table, Christopher. Go on now, get up, get up. Everyone, it’s rude as heck to point fingers and laugh at a classmate, but if there was a time to do it, it would be now.”

    Unsurprisingly, audience participation in Mr. Peterson’s classroom remained at an all time high, because everyone was eager to join in jeering at the poor kid. The blatant shaming seemed a little bit much to Tabitha’s somewhat more modern sensibilities. But, then again, on the other hand it was genuinely appalling that the guy hadn’t drawn much more than a single line in an entire week. Even with some absences, it should not have been hard for him to get something done, but instead the table over there on that side mostly always had loud people chattering away with each other.

    “I mean—the little part he did draw looks great, though!” Eddie was either trying to defend his friend, or kick him when he was down—Tabitha couldn’t quite tell which.

    “Hah hah, very funny,” Mr. Peterson paused and looked at the single drawn line on the paper again. “You know, you actually have a bit of a point. And, that only makes it worse!”

    “I at least mostly finished mine,” Vanessa muttered under her breath. “Those guys over there were talking instead of working like literally every day!”

    “Vanessa, I sure hope you’re whispering all hush hush ‘bout what you learned this past week!” Mr. Peterson noticed her and called her out right away. “Or, would you care to join Christopher Robin there, at the kiddie table?”

    “I um,” Vanessa glowered. “I learned I should just keep my mouth shut?”

    “Good answer,” Mr. Peterson said with an approving nod. “Not changing your grade, though. C minus for Vanessa. And, I’m only being so lenient this first week! I will not be grading so graciously after this, people. I hope this is your wake up call. You do good work, I’ll stay out of your business. You do not so good work, you better be prepared to tell me why and what it’s teaching you.

    “Okay, Art Show! From sixth period here, we’re putting James and then… Ellen’s pieces up for display, there. Rest of you lot can all take your drawings home with you, show your parents, stick ‘em up on your fridge, or what have you. But, if you do go to see our school’s upcoming big production of The Wiz, as in Wizard of Oz but all musical-like, you can also appreciate some of the more outstanding work your classmates here worked on there at our Art Show.”

    Mr. Peterson then began making the rounds returning the rest of the assignments to everyone personally. As he did so, Tabitha couldn’t help but internally grimace, because Amber was glaring daggers across the room at her in a blatant show of animosity.

    It’s not MY fault you didn’t finish your work! Tabitha pretended not to notice. Or, if it IS, it’s because you and your stupid friends are wasting all your time talking about me instead of doing what you’re supposed to!

( Previous, 65 pt 1 & 2 | RE: Trailer Trash | Next, To be Continued... )

/// Mileage may very for readers on whether they like me sometimes going in-depth for classtime like this or not. A LOT of school I remember being quiet, excruciating drudgery, but for me that also made the classes that... weren't that really stand out for me. A lot of fictions with academy settings gloss over most if not all of the actual class bits, but what I've enjoyed doing is having an interesting first period (Personal Fitness) and then an interesting sixth period (Art 2D) to kind of sandwich all of the other more mundane boring class bits.

Lunchtime socializing as always would be the actual slice of ham in that sandwich, but that's more like an unstructured/unsupervised social freebie space on the bingo sheet that is writing school settings.

Will update links and guide page later on! It's gorgeous out and I'm eager to spend some time outdoors for a change.