Grace wins a poster contest

When I was in middle school, my mom was all about winning contests. Please note that I said my mom, not me, not my my brothers, not my sisters, and not any other family members. My mom just wanted to see her kids succeed at something, and while that was nice, I really didn't want to be writing essays about who-knows-what in my spare time. Curating my National Geographic collection was much more fun. By 13 I had collected every issue from 1980 to 2002, had been gifted a monthly subscription for Christmas, and had plastered my bedroom walls with the map inserts. I still have all my past issues in boxes in my mom's basement and in Dan's mom's basement, and my mom bugs me every six months to get all those stupid magazines out of her house. I don't subscribe anymore because now National Geographic is less about geography and more about crappy environmentalism, which I don't give a poo about (nothing against saving the earth, it just doesn't tickle my fancy quite like information about the cultural customs of ethnic groups in Northern Thailand).

So anyway, against our collective will, my mom entered us in all these annoying contests. Somewhere there's a terrifying photo of me wearing a fancy Easter hat for the Easter Hat Contest. At the age of twelve I had a gig writing funny essays for the local free newspaper because my mom made me. Don't even get me started on the spelling bee, where I actually did get to the regional level. I was out in the fourth round because I spelled "assess" as "a-s-s-e-s", possibly becoming the first regional spelling bee contestant who actually had two reasons to be booted off the family-friendly stage.

I mean, it wasn't all bad. We did win lots of stuff and were showered in fame and fortune. I mean, I even got my name in the library catalog. I won a write and illustrate your own book contest about an Egyptian kid who got lost in a sandstorm. My prize was library immortality - to this day, you can go check out my book and bring it home for three weeks if you so wish. I still can't believe they rejected my book featuring anthropomorphic cleaning supplies, but whatever. And yes, it was funny. Think Toy Story, just better and with Harry the Hand-Vac instead of Buzz Lightyear. (I actually do have this story floating around on a computer somewhere.)

And thus, by the age of 12, I was actually pretty loaded. I had amassed 750 dollars in savings bonds, redeemable at some date in the future. I never did cash the bonds because my dad refused to acknowledge that I had ever received the bonds when I asked where they were ten years later. Fine, be that way.

But every year, without fail, my mom made us enter the most annoying contest of all time. The AAA Traffic Safety Poster Contest. It was the stuff of nightmares.

It should have been easy enough. The deadline was mid-January. They gave you a theme. You made a poster illustrating the theme. You submitted it. Life went on.

But no. We had at least five kids entering the contest in any given year and nobody actually gave a poo except my mom, who insisted that the posters not only be the product of hours of unnecessary toil but that each and every one was unique. First, you had to think of a snappy slogan for the provided theme. Ugh. Then you had to think of an idea to illustrate the snappy slogan. Ugh. Then you had to trace your idea in pencil on the poster board. Ugh. Then mom had to tell you that your drawing sucked and needed more interest and symbolism. Ugh. Then you had to erase it all and start again. Ugh. Then you actually had to make the poster using some untried and untested medium, which was usually untried and untested for a reason.

The year I won first place in the contest (not to be confused with the year I won second place, or the year I won third place, or the year my brother won second place, or the year my sister won third place), the strongly-suggested medium of choice was cut paper. The theme was Road Safety at Night. The snappy slogan, strongly suggested by my mom, was Carry a Light at Night: It's a Bright Idea. The poster itself was a smiling girl standing on the side of a road holding a flashlight so it shined on the creepy slogan floating around in the sky at the top of the poster. Since I normally participated in art only if it involved laboriously tracing and transferring a map of Azerbaijan to my bedroom map wall, I thought I had done my part. But no. My mom said I needed more background interest and symbolism. So I made an owl, which was only one or two colors and fairly low effort.

Then it was time for the most annoying art project of all time. Cut paper. My mom insisted that my poster must not be colored with markers, no matter how fancy the markers, and it must not be decorated with glitter, no matter how sparkly the glitter. No, I had to cut everything from colored paper. Car headlights? Neon yellow paper, two circles, which were not good enough and had to be oval, so two ovals. Girl's nose? Pink paper, which even I admitted kind of looked like a peach cucumber growing out of her ear, so I had to change that too. We worked on this thing for three days straight. I even had to cut the owl's eyes out of paper. Those eyes were almost the death of me. They had to be tiny, because they were owl eyes, but they were so tiny that the glue didn't really make them stick too well. They kept falling off and I kept putting them back on. Pain. But finally, finally, finally, the poster was finished and my mom thought it was passable. We sent them in, two days late, because my mom's always late. Thanks, mom.

About six weeks later, the lady from the AAA Traffic Safety Poster Contest Board of Directors and Torturers rang me up. My poster had won first place and 250 bucks in savings bonds. I was a little happy, just a little.

"We loved your poster!" gushed the Director of Poster Contest Pain. "The slogan was so imaginative. We loved how you used paper to create the scene. You obviously put a lot of hard work into your poster."

If only you knew, if only you knew.

"But do you know what we liked the best?"

"What?"

"Well," said the Director of Poster Contest Pain, in a secretive tone, "We thought that the owl was a great touch. He was winking, just like he knew it was A Bright Idea!"

"Winking?" I was a little confused.

"Yes. You know, how you only put on one eye? It made him look so wise!"

Oh. Those stupid owl eyes. Only one of them had survived the grueling trip to headquarters by mail. And the Director of Poster Contest Pain thought that it was intentional and he was supposed to look wise. Oh.

And let me tell you, I took the money and ran. Well, after the awards banquet. I ran to the eclairs and then I took the money and ran.

Yeah, this would be why I still hate art, to this day. Thanks, mom.