I made the mistake of drawing a Garfield at the orphanage this afternoon. I should have learnt from the folly of drawing cartoon characters for young children during my time with the four young boys at my Guatemalan homestay, but I didn't, so today I spent more than two hours drawing them for a large group of extremely demanding four and five year olds at the orphanage.- 'Dame un pirate.' a five year old help a piece of paper out to me, when he had seen me drawing a Garfield.
- 'Dame un rata.' a four year old waved another piece of paper in front of my face, before I had even started drawing a pirate.
- 'Dame un robot.' another five year old demanded, whilst I was still struggling to finish my drawing of a swashbuckling bucanner with one leg because of the four year pushing his piece of paper in my face, demanding a picture of a rat.
- 'Dame un conjeco y despues Garfield.' another four year old thrust another piece of paper in front of me, whilst I was still putting the finishing touches on a oro (parrot) on my pirates shoulder, and trying to remember I then had to draw a rat and a robot.
And so it went on. Pirates. Garfields. Robots. Rabbits. Rats. Cats. Dogs. More and more children started gathering around me, holding blank bits of paper and making more and more vocal demands for cartoon characters. There started to be complaints that I was taking too long with each drawing. One little boy started to draw on my head with a blue crayon whilst he waited for his rata (rat). I noticed another little boy had already drawn on my jeans trouser leg with a red crayon whilst waiting for his gato (cat). I noticed this just after I had finished asking another little boy why he was washing his hands with toothpaste, and just after another little boy had started crying because I had only drawn him one robot when he had specifically asked for two. Things were getting out of control.
- 'Necesito regresar a mi casa.' I mumbled.
I really needed (necesito) to return (regresar) to my house (a mi casa) for a lie down, as I was bloody exhausted after a long afternoon of drawing bloody Garfields.
