It Takes a Village

My best friend Anna has a cute little son called Andrei.
I haven't spent much quality time with the little nipper because he's extremely active and kind of gives me an eye tic after an hour or so.
He had a project for kindergarten (or maybe first grade, I can't keep track) where he had to contribute a building for the little town his class is building. They were told to use shoe boxes or cereal boxes, whatever was around.
Now I'm not saying Andrei is gay, but I will say he's got a flair for the dramatic. He likes to examine cosmetics, he experiments with his own hairstyles and he's finicky about apparel. You do the math, and use a lavender glitter pen.
I told his mom I'd help him with his building, since I had the art supplies and God knows I have shoe boxes.
So I decided on a disco.
I took over an empty Land's End shoe box I'd sponged in metallic blue and silver. I X-acto knifed out a door and a few windows. It was up to him to decorate it with the glitter and Day-Glo paints I took along.
The boy went punk on us. He smeared, he daubed, he speckled and he went way asymmetrical.
Anna and I were cringing at his emerging abstract expressionism and his disdain for the conventions of brush cleaning, paint running together on the palette and putting lids back on paint bottles. He was acting like a bantam rooster on acid.
His building ended up looking like an urban gay bar from a squalid neighborhood.
I LOVED IT!
The boy created a veritable Disco Inferno! The teachers will die when they put it in with the inevitable pet shop, candy store, church and schoolhouse. There goes the neighborhood!
This could be the start of something big. Studio 54, anyone?