on face painting

In the spirit of participating in New England fall activities, J. and I frolicked our way over to the Boston Pumpkin Festival a few weekends ago, a sprawling affair in Government Center. Two years ago, at this very affair, Bostonians/Cambridgians/

Somervillians banded together to set the world record for the most pumpkins carved in one day, and succeeded with 30,128 grinning jack-o-lanterns carved. Last year, bursting with pride at their own accomplishment the previous year, Bostonians/Cambridgians/Somervillians once again banded together to demolish their own world record for the most pumpkins carved in one day. This time, they miserably failed, carving a mere 20,342 pumpkins.

My history with pumpkin carving being short and bleak (involving indelible pumpkin gut stains on clothing and broken blunt butter knives), when we arrived at the scene, I took J. to the volunteer tent, haphazardly pitched at the corner of the square. "Hi, can we help?" I said. The elderly man behind the table looked us once over, and grunted, "Face Painting could use a little help. What size T-shirt do you wear?" I received yet another oversized t-shirt to add to my collection, and pulled it over my shoulders as we followed a slight woman through the crowds to the face painting tent.

J. and I proceeded to spend the next two hours Q-tipping-on-demand onto the adorably smooth plump cheeks of 4 and 5 year olds (and a few hairy cheeks of pre-teenagers). Face painting, I quickly realized, especially with a bunch of decrepit Q-tips, half-dried paint and frozen fingers, was the perfect battleground for my creative side and logical side, as I ambitiously began to draw black cats and fairy princesses, only to find that both resulted in lumpy blobs with squiggly lines in various directions. Unlike teaching, however, "Free Face Painting at Government Center' contained the brilliant caveat of unaccountability. No matter what form of disaster ensued on their child's face as a result of unskilled Q-tip blotting, the parents had the same 'you're brilliant' expression on their faces. Whether it was fake or real made no difference to me. If only all jobs could be so...rewarding.