Art Victory

The other day, I came home from work, and found my daughter still awake, furiously painting away at an art project.

"What are you still doing up?" I asked.

"I have to finish this," she said, "It's due tomorrow."

"Okay," I said, "But don't stay up too late."

I went to bed, and she stayed up...for several more hours I think. Sadly, I found out from her the next day that she had the date wrong. It hadn't been due the next day after all. She'd stressed herself out, and gone without sleep for nothing. Here's the picture she produced on that all-nighter:

It's a really fun picture. If you look really close, you can see a bunch of pop culture references in the background like the Starship Enterprise and a swarm of Daleks. She told me that there were many other things there as well, but she erased them so that she didn't have to color them in, because it was just taking too long.

A little while later, she went on a field trip with her art class...on a Saturday no less. It was the VASE trip. VASE stands for Visual Arts Scholastic Event, and there are 20 different regions that the state is divided up into. Each kid can enter a picture into the competition, judges look them over, and interview the student, then make a determination on who goes on to the state competition.

That morning, my daughter woke up feeling like garbage. She'd been sick the night before, and it hadn't improved overnight. I told her she should stay home from the trip, but she insisted that she needed to go. I think you had to pay for your bus ride to the event...but only if you said you were coming and then ghosted instead. So, she felt like she had to show.

I felt bad for her when I dropped her off at the school, but she powered through. She looked like she was doing better by the time she came home, but she probably wasn't, because she went up to her room and fell asleep for the whole afternoon.

The next day, I got an unusual call. It was a number that I didn't recognize. I usually don't answer calls from numbers I don't know. They're almost guaranteed to be telemarketers, so why would I? Telemarketers are pretty easy to spot, though, because their caller ID number always claims to be from my old area code. I don't get calls from random people in that area code. I have all the names and numbers from there saved in my contacts. Sometimes I get unrecognized number calls from the Houston area--doctors, dentist, school nurses and the like, though.

This time, it was a Houston number, but what doctor, dentist, or school nurse would be calling me on a Sunday evening at 8:00 PM? It wasn't the nurse, but it was a teacher.

"I'm your daughter's art teacher," the woman on the line said. "Can you go get her, and put her on speaker phone for me. I have to tell her something, and I think you'll want to hear this as well."

Well, this seemed like something special. I went upstairs and found her in her room with the lights off. I was afraid she was asleep again, but she was just watching a movie on her phone.

"I have some news for you, big news." her teacher said, "The results just came in from the Vase competition, and you are going to state."

My daughter smiled and thanked her teacher for the news. She was pretty subdued in her reaction, but she had been sick for a couple of days, so I didn't hold it against her. Her teacher went on to tell her that in April, the state competition would be held in either Austin or San Antonio, and the school would take her and all the other kids that had progressed to the state competition there, where they would stay overnight, and visit several of the sights while they were there. My daughter smiled bigger at the news of that opportunity. She also perked up when she heard that if she did well, she could win a scholarship. She's been working pretty hard to get good grades and earn herself some kind of scholarship for college, and here was an opportunity to get one for doing something that she would have done anyway. Perfect.

I'm pretty excited for her. I never got to do anything as interesting when I was in high school. Mostly because I was a pretty mediocre student. I would have loved to go on a trip like the one that is in her future. I hope she appreciates it, and has lots of fun.