‘Letter to the Editor

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into The Cadre, (imag- ine, if you would, the soundtrack to JAWS right now) it seems there’s another egg contest. Not another colouring contest, rather, something resulting from that first one.

And before getting into the details, I must say that I’m a huge fan of Eugene O’Neill (sp), and I’m sorry for wrecking his powerful title. Along with that play, you should read “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” and “Desire Under The Elms.” The writing could change your life, or at least the few hours you spend, wrapped in a blanket while reading and noticing that the snow is still falling, still blow- ing.

The eggman colouring contest was, I thought, fun. Fun AFTER I threw out my first entry which was coloured using the traditional tools — - crayons. The Cadre people, brilliant as they may be, gave me (and my fine fellow competitive colourists) an INFERIOR colouring surface. I remembered, while colouring my first entry, that I’d always disliked colour- ing when I was a child. At that time, the lines presented big problems. Staying in them seemed, well, dumb (that’s the word I would have used way back then), after the first, say, two minutes. My tolerance, patience, or whatever kept other colourers (like my

best friend Robin Kells —- we met in

grade one) within the black-lined lim- its, ran out. And so I found myself in the exact frame of mind while pig- menting The Cadre’s hapless eggman.

The colouring was dreadful. And this time, owing to my advanced age and subsequent scholastic endeav- ors and degrees, I WAS staying in the lines. That wasn’t the problem.

I coloured there in my office in Dalton Hall.

And I coloured.

My eggman got worse and worse.

He didn’t get more colourful. He just got more smudged.

And more smudged.

[14]

The Eggman Cometh

I may have panicked.

I carefully chose my crayons (generously loaned to me by the even- tual highly-deserving winner,

Professor Shannon Murray) by read- ~

ing their names (crayon names are great, aren’t they? how does one get THAT job?), by holding them up to my desk lamp to consider their true essence, and by worrying about how much time this exercise was taking when I had grading and research and such stuff to continue.

To be honest I was startled by my competitive drive.

And I was sickened by my fin- ished eggman.

I’d used many colours, so why oh why was he so grey? Black, even. The contest wasn’t called, “Kill the eggman,” was it?

I crumpled up the first entry and contemplated another career. It didn’t help at all that I’d seen Professor Shannon Murray’s artistic genius evident in her entries. I vowed to go home and to not quit my day-job.

But at home, to my surprise, the eggman had followed me. (Okay, maybe I did grab a handful of copies of the paper on my way out.) (And did I mention that that said paper, the paper itself, the actual papyrus, was defective? There’s a reason why colouring books have the grade of paper, the texture, the substance that they do —- why frustrate or make insecure a child?)

(Why frustrate or make inse- cure a colouring professor?)

At some point on that week- end, I opened my briefcase to resume grading papers. The eggman came out. The eggman cameth.

I don’t know what came over me, but the copy of “Toronto Life Fashion” nearby may have had some- thing to do with it. So my first “real” entry was coloured with nailpolish and lipstick. I think. I’m trying to remem- ber, and I’m trying to stick to the facts, and trust me, I’m trying to get to this next eggman contest.

All this background sadly is

necessary.

I may have used only discon- tinued shades. I coloured a few entries with such chemicals for my palatte. I also wrote text. I did, in fact, write a fairly lengthy literary commentary to accompany at least one egg. There was something about cell phones and text messaging, and there was sup-

posed to be something about botox —. -all this had to do with fall shades.

(makeup), and’ falling (as it looked like the eggman was about to do (from whatever surface he was sitting on). The text was intended to read like the fashion write-ups from Paris. «--

You’d think I should have been grading, no?

And then things got really crazy. I blame INDIGO. More specifi- cally, I blame their concept of a “read- ing space” or “cafe.” To be really real- ly specific, I blame INDIGO’s check- ers table.

When I was a kid, I was lousy at at least two things. Colouring (as we’ve covered).

And checkers. :

I lost every game. I thought it

was because my sister was cheating. It

has come as a bit of a shock that every game I’ve played at the INDIGO read- ing space I HAVE ALSO LOST.

(A certain Cadre editor’s words were, “The wheels fell off.”)

Fine. Whatever. My point is, at some point, the final entry (I knew | had to stop) was a fairly decently coloured-in eggman (using good markers) which had a checker-board grid measured out and professionally (practically) drawn over it. An over- lay. A layered eggman. I was on a roll. Which led me to money.

Just to clear something up that appeared in a previous issue of the UPEI paper, there was no bribe.

(You’d think, really, that if |