Sympathy For The Devil

Ciel reminds me a lot of myself at that same age, but she’s still very much her own person. While she’s fairly quiet, she loves to laugh, and enjoys the funny things in life and has a great sense of humor, getting downright silly at times. She’s very much a kid, not interested in teenager stuff, and has her head in the clouds a lot, but that’s because she’s thinking about something. She’s always thinking though, and you never quite know what she’ll say or do next. She loves to draw, and she’s very good at it, no matter what her subject is.
   A few years ago, I was meeting with her first grade teacher Mrs. Bodily, for Parent/Teacher conferences, and she was explaining to me that each of the children had decorated a folder that held their school work and tests that we would be discussing in that meeting. I saw a pile of various folders, each with different drawings like rainbows, unicorns, race cars, rockets and kittens, all drawn by a child's hand. Then she pulls out Ciel's folder, and with a strained look on her face, she hands it to me. I quickly understood why when I saw Ciel’s artwork. She had decided to draw a little devil character on the front of the folder, and had colored in huge roaring flames all around the little Satan. She had even given him a lopsided smirk on his devilish face, holding a big pitchfork in his hand, looking rather pleased to be burning for all time on the front of the folder.
   Frankly it was a very good drawing, and I even caught myself thinking how much I liked the way she had brought the flames to life with her crayon and colored pencil technique. Sadly her teacher did not share my enthusiasm for Ciel’s abilities, and haltingly tried to express her concerns to me about the serious matter of Satan and First Graders. I knew Ciel was just drawing whatever had popped into her head that day, and it was totally innocent, but nevertheless it still took some explaining, and a lot of reassurances that we had a normal home life, but Mrs. Bodily never quite looked at me, nor treated me the same ever since. Ciel is still a fantastic artist, and draws what she wants, and whatever she thinks, and I love her work! What can I say except “Bwah! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!!!!”.