Farewell Cards

As it is my last week at Terakoya, I thought it would be fitting to get my younger students to make farewell cards. I was expecting lovely, heartfelt messages combined with artful and thoughtful pictures. But kids are unpredictable creatures and the cards I received were more on the offensive side.
I wanted the kids to write "Goodbye Sam" complete with a caricature of myself on the front. Inside, I wanted them to write a message in Japanese and on the opposite page they could draw whatever they wanted.
I wandered around the room looking at their drawings of me. The results were shocking. I either looked like the Joker, my grandma, or a drag queen. All these drawings left me self-conscious about having a hair cut and my lips reduced in size at the nearest opportunity.
I wanted to rip up their work in bitter anger. There was one kid who drew me sitting on the toilet taking a crap but obviously missing my target because I had a pile of shit on my head. I asked this little-Picasso why he drew me like this. He merely replied I had a poo-head. That was a valid enough reason so I left him to continue his work.
In a different class which consisted of two girls, I had a different problem to face. The problem was that they became caustic art-critics. I drew a Japanese flag on the back of my own farewell card to myself and they both poured scorn on it. I asked what was wrong and they said the circle in the centre was the wrong shade of red. I let this unwarranted attack on my work pass, but they continued to harass me about my drawings that failed to live up to their high expectations. My drawing of a piece of sushi was too flat; my smiley sun was too round; and my drawing of a laughing mouse looked liked a grumpy elephant. I had no platform to mount a counter-attack because their drawings were brilliant. They even made me resemble someone of my own sex.