Educational Farce

The picture that appears in this post is one of my mother’s favorites. But not mine. 

It seems like a photo taken at the time that I was performing an activity that had me so entertained and engrossed that I did not realize that someone was there to portray me. It's exactly the opposite. The school decided that for that year’s picture day, instead of posing facing the camera with brimming smile, we were going to pose like we were doing an art activity. So for that picture, they took us to the garden where that giraffe that appears in the photo was already set for the farce, completely painted and finished, none of us had nothing to do with its realization. If you look carefully at the background of the photo, you can see the little legs of my classmates, as we were in line, waiting for our turn to play the role which was requested of us.

Although I was only five, I can remember the frustration I felt. What was the point of representing something that was not true? Why were we made partakers of a lie? 
Many things bother me of that particular moment: the falsity and its premeditation, the deceit to our parents, the skills of the –private--school in the manipulation of us as kids so it could continue charging tuition, but what bothers me the most is that never, not even once, did we do an art activity even remotely similar to the one shown in the picture--and I would have loved to do so. I remember as if it were yesterday, the excitement I felt when, for a few seconds, I grabbed that brush with dried paint. How I wished that all this performance would have been true! How much I would have enjoyed painting that giraffe! Then, joining my mother, I would consider that picture one of my favorites.