Okay okay, so it’s not as bad as it sounded yesterday. A person is allowed to have a bad day.

Luckily my art class was great last night. My fellow students probably thought I was a raving lunatic, I was that weird (or maybe just silly). But I really didn’t care. I’m actually a bit embarrassed to say what I did. It sounds so silly. I’ll only say that I spent part of the lesson sitting on the floor completely wrapped in cardboard wrapping (I’m blushing just to be writing that).

If I was all artsy fartsy I could say it was the artist being the art or some rubbish like that. Our teacher said it was a pity she hadn’t brought a camera, but that wasn’t it at all. I wouldn’t have done it if there was a camera. I wasn’t acting. I wasn’t attention seeking. I was playing.

I think that as we grow older we forget about playing. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s like Picasso who, I have read, reached perfection at the age of twelve and spent the rest of his life learning how to draw as a child.

We have to learn how to play again. When we were children it came naturally, we just did it. But we have lost that natural ability, shed it like an old skin, and it was left discarded somewhere along the path, unwanted and unneeded, or so we thought.

When I say playing, I don’t mean pretending to be children and ingratiating ourselves on any kids we happen to know, although some people are good at playing with kids without any pretending, like my Bish. I’m not, but mind you I wasn’t much good at playing with kids when I was a kid myself. It’s not that.

And I don’t mean playing games, with set rules and teams and clearly stated goals. It’s not about winning or even about ‘participating’. I mean playing free, with no aim, with nothing to gain, just for the fun of it. Just because.

And that’s what I did last night in my art class. I couldn't understand why i was so happy, then I remember thinking to myself "Hey, I'm playing!"

So why did I keep wanting to apologize that I wasn’t sitting nicely by the table and creating something that could be seen and touched, something that I could take home to show Bish?