Big Daddy Paul

I love my kid. He is a fun, energetic little ball of curiosity. He gives me some of the funnest days that I can remember. He does have a pretty significant drawback, though. He is bad at art. Really bad. Think Jackson Pollock if he was blind and had no arms and legs. Each time I see copies of his latest “project” I put on the happy face and say, “wow, did you do that?” In reality, I think to myself, “how much more of this stuff do I gotta put up with. My kid can’t draw for shit!”

I realize how poor my reaction is. A better parent would spend more time with their kid on art projects to develop their skills along to the point where they don’t inspire cringing. The problem is, I am even worse than him! If I had an artistic bone in my body, then I broke it years ago and it never fully healed. We played drunken charades last weekend and all I got for my clues were blank stares and head scratches. Maybe my irritation is that Malcolm can already draw better than me and he is four. It is precisely that reason that Malcolm and I never do art projects around the house (that is clearly Amy’s job.) I have utterly nothing to offer him in the artistic development department, and he is falling behind.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t present much of an issue, Malcolm is terrible at a lot of different things. He doesn’t know how to properly cook a steak, his Spanish sounds like gibberish, and he couldn’t shoot a squirrel to save his life. The unique problem with the art, is that we have so much of it lying around the house. Between his art class at preschool and Amy’s occasional afternoon paint fests, Malcolm has already generated a substantial body of work. Our house shows it too, as evidence of his prolificness occupy every nook and cranny in our home. We got pottery on the counter that looks like cat poo, pictures reminiscent of baseball diamonds on the floor of his room, paintings of giant blobs, some of which having arm and legs, hanging from every square inch of wall space, and collages looking like nothing special and containing every known waste item known to humanity sitting around everywhere.

I realized today that cleaning up the clutter around this place is so difficult because it always involves the same question, “Does throwing this away make me a bad person?” Sure, I’d like to keep all of it, but that would require the use of a rented storage unit, which is simply not going to happen. I don’t want Malcolm to think that I don’t appreciate his effort, but does it really make sense to keep all of it? We have our favorite paintings (Pablo Sandoballs, Funny Looking House and Odd Rainbow) all hanging up on specially designed picture hangers, but what to do with the rest. So far, I have just been throwing the rest into the back of his closet, but one day that pile of near trash is going to come down, and if it contains the wrong collage, it may take Malcolm with it. Is there a better way?

Tags: messiness

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