My last post, “The Time is Coming”, was about as down and depressed as I am capable of getting. I am better now. Maybe I should explain how I did that.
I brought myself out of depression by grading papers. I know, teacher cliché, right? But there is much, much more to it than that.
In my last period class, I have one precious girl student who has been paying me for my many cartoon drawings on the dry erase board. You see, I have for many years been using my cartoonist skills to illustrate things on the board and draw attention especially to the lesson focus and objectives. Kids love these. It inspires them to commit random acts of doodlery. They imitate my toons and sometimes create their own. I don’t do Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny any more, not because I can’t, but because the owners of those copyrights have become unreasonably litigious and have sued teachers for imitating their copyrighted work. I only use cartoons of my own creation now. I have developed my own cast of characters. Some of my students have done the same.
The girl, whose name and identity I cannot here divulge (it is the law that protects student identities, but I thoroughly buy into the notion) turned in a paper yesterday with Chibis all over it. She gives me drawings of her own creation because she likes to repay me for sharing my cartoons with her. She also covers her papers with these things because of the laws of doodlery. When you are in a high school English class, your life is at risk because you could easily become bored to death. The first law of doodlery says that you must use every spare moment of the lesson to draw something. This keeps both your mind and your hands active enough to keep you alive. The second law of doodlery requires that you make maximum use of every blank part of your answer page. The third and final law of doodlery is to draw things that are different. If you draw too mundane, or too much the same, your mind goes numb and death by boredom is looking in through the windows of your mind.
So today’s Paffooney, this offering of Chibis, is the same set of doodles that pulled me out of the darkness. I copied the pencil Chibis from her paper, as precisely as I could in every way except size. Then I inked them and colored them. I won’t tell you what the Vietnamese word means or why it is there. You are entitled to your best guesses.
A Chibi is a version of a manga or cartoon character that is child-proportioned or deformed by an exaggerated cuteness. I gave the main figure blue hair because in manga language blue hair means youthful, energetic, cool, and introverted, a perfect description for my little Bishoujo, my little Chibi-doodler. She is now officially a life-saver, a heroine in my book.
Yesterday’s post was dark and depressing, and I fear the issues that created it are real, and they are not going away. But don’t worry for me. I know how to handle such things. And I do have help.
