Cry For Help

So here I am, waiting for breakfast at Sophie’s Cosmic Cafe. If you ever go there, get the eggs benedict; they’re good. Tell them Michael sent you and you’ll get 10 percent off (I’m joking, it’s only five percent). But I’m sitting here waiting for my breakfast and drinking a coffee. On the placemats, there are reproductions of drawings kids did while they waited for their breakfasts. Give a kid a pack of crayons to keep him from freaking out while waiting for his blueberry waffles and what he produces will likely be amusing and cute. See, there’s a reason why shows like Kids Say the Darndest Things are on the air. It’s cuz kids are uninhibited and don’t self-censor. You ask them a question or ask them to do something and they will literally say and do the darndest things. As you might have guessed, Sophie’s Cosmic Cafe takes the really good ones to make their placemats.

They’re not the only place that does this. I remember being handed packs of crayons when I was younger at restaurants all the time. Sadly, none of my work was deemed worthy for mass production and display. Frustrated, I think I tried to produce shamelessly contrived and commercial works proclaiming how great the place was in an effort to make it onto a placemat. Despite trying to give my audience what they wanted and consequently selling out at the same time, my crayon art was still never good enough to be preserved for posterity.

So I’m at Sophie’s and I’m looking at my placemat. On the surface, the drawing looks like the usual stuff kids produce even though there are no spaceships or dinosaurs incorporated into it. It’s a picture of this kid’s parents when they’re not at Sophie’s and when they are at Sophie’s. But on closer inspection, there is much more going on with this placemat. Dad, when he’s not at Sophie’s. is an angry angry man; he looks extremely cross and is clenching his fist. When he’s at Sophie’s, he is almost euphoric. Mom appears to be equally emotionally unbalanced. Her brain rotted by a steady diet of Valium; she just sits there, emotionless and does nothing while this unbalanced man wrecks a child’s life. This placemat is a visual representation of every Korn song ever written. Then it dawns on me… THESE AREN’T SIMPLE DRAWINGS DONE BY A KID ON A PLACEMAT WHILE WAITING FOR BLUEBERRY WAFFLES. IT’S A CRY FOR HELP.

This poor kid. Six days out of the week this kid’s life was a living hell. “Do your homework, no running in the house and no you can’t stay up later.” Then one day out of the week, he went for breakfast with his dysfunctional parents, they cooled off for an hour, ate their breakfast and were a happy nuclear family.

A cry for help. A true artistic expression of emotion that’s attempting to communicate with the onlooker. But everyone around me sits silently, eating their delicious eggs benedict and blueberry waffles like the sheep they are; not knowing that their food rests on a work of art.

Inspired by this child’s work, I put paintbrush to construction paper and came up with my own series of “Cry For Help” artwork. I’ve found that painting, drinking a nice cup of tea and watching reruns of My So Called Life could be very therapeutic. The “Cry For Help” placemat series will be on display on the wall behind my desk until the end of the year.