Brilliantly Insightful Question of the Day Dept (with shameless parental bragging to wade through first)

I have the approximate artistic skill (when it comes to drawing and painting and such) of a mildly spastic Chihuahua. So it is a complete mystery to me how it came about that Kasia and Sean and Kegan are all tremendously artistically talented. I mean, scary-good. (For those of you who don't know it, Sean and Kegan are my 13-year-old identical twin boys, who are about three months away from being taller than I am.)

Anyway, Texas holds this sort of state championship of art every school year -- I can't remember the formal name of it, but let's call it the Capitol Art Show, because if your stuff makes it into the show then it spends the entire month of march on display in the rotunda of the Texas state capitol building. The way it works is this: every elementary, middle, and high school in the state gets to pick two works of art from all the art that all the students have done that year, and they enter those two pieces in the contest. (There are some 4.5 million children in Texas public schools; so if you figure a thousand kids per school, which I think is way conservative, that's about 4,500 schools. But that last number is a pure guess on my part. And I imagine not all the schools submit entries. I think what we can safely say is that the number of kids doing art in Texas public schools, and therefore eligibile for the show, is roughly comparable to the number of kids playing football in Texas high schools, and therefore eligible for the state championship in football.)

From all those pieces of art, one hundred are chosen for the show. (I know there's not much suspense to this story -- obviously one of my kids made the show -- but humor me here and pretend not to know what's coming.)

So Sean and Kegan came home several weeks ago and told us about the contest. The reason they told us, was that of the two pieces McMeans Junior High school had chosen to submit, one was by Sean and the other was by Kegan. There are about 1,200 students at McMeans (though of course not all of them take art); so we were quite proud of this. Sean, however, was honked off. He informed us bitterly that he wasn't going to win because his art teacher had picked the wrong piece -- "I've done several that were way better than that." And frankly, I would agree that he's done better work -- there's one self-portrait that is a study in shadow using (I think) charcoal over some sort of moody green base that just knocks me out -- but then I'm hardly the kind of person they're going to pick to judge a statewide student art contest.

Well, the pieces were sent in, and we looked at the odds, and we congratulated the boys for having had the best pieces in their school, and then we promptly forgot about it.

Then a couple of weeks ago Dessie sat down to go through the mail and found an envelope from the Texas Education Art Association (name probably not right). She opened it. It was an invitation for Sean to come to the awards ceremony at the Capitol, as one of the hundred Texas students whose work had been selected. I won't even try to describe how she felt at that moment.

Then she looked back at the stack of mail. And there was another letter from the Texas Education Art Association. She opened it; and there was an invitation for Kegan to come to the awards ceremony at the Capitol, since his piece also had been selected for the show.

-- Okay, major shameless bragging alert. You have been warned. --

That's right, folks: BOTH MY SONS MADE THE ANNUAL TEXAS CAPITOL ART SHOW!!!!

This is, according to the nice lady who handed out the medals at the hour-long awards ceremony, the first time two siblings have both made the show, at least in the same year. Our family supplied 18% of the eighth-grader works in the show, which I think gives us a claim to a peculiar kind of family record. (But then, considering that most families don't have eight kids to throw into the mix, I suppose our accomplishment has to be discounted at least a little bit.)

So, we go to the awards ceremony last Sunday. Sean and Kegan aren't exactly dandies, but we had gone out and bought new dress clothes for them, and their mom informed them that they were going to do something with their hair. They both settled on a short little Orlando Bloom pirate ponytail, though since they are inordinately tall, skinny and blond, it's unlikely that Orlando Bloom is the image that leaped into the heads of the spectators as Sean and Kegan walked across the stage.

The kids' names are called out one at a time, and each walks across the stage to cheers and applause to where some politician whose name I forget stands waiting to hang a gold medal around the kid's neck, while their piece is projected onto a screen above the stage. Then the next kid's name is called as the previous kid exits the stage. They had the youngsters arranged in order by school district, and then by last name, and in the case of Sean and Kegan by first name; so Kegan's name was called first.

"From Katy ISD...and I'm sorry, this is my first time seeing this...um, Keegan Pierce." The tall, skinny, blond-ponytailed Pierce boy from Katy walked composedly across the stage to the accompaniment of an uncouth amount of noise from his family, shook the politician's hand, accepted his medal, and turned to pose for the photographer. This was the signal for the presenter to read the next name: "From Katy ISD, Sean Pierce." The tall, skinny, blond-ponytailed Pierce boy from Katy started walking composedly across the stage to the accompaniment of an uncouth amount of noise from his family, and the presenter's eyes widened and her jaw literally dropped open. She reached out and snatched Kegan's arm as he passed her on his way off the stage, and asked the Brilliantly Insightful Question of the Day:

"Is that your brother?"

By the way, in case you haven't picked up on this: I'm sorta proud of my boys.

UPDATE: Okay, so the part about Dessie opening the mail...I wasn't there when the letters got home, so I just sort of made something up to fill in the story. But because I do care about accuracy, I asked Dess once I got home, and here's what actually happened.

Sean came home from school and told Dessie, "Mom, I have something you have to sign." This happens all the time, of course, with seven kids still in public schools. Sean handed Dess two envelopes and wandered off -- being Sean, he had no clue what was in the envelopes. So Dessie really did open the first envelope with no idea of what it was...it's just that it got delivered by Sean instead of the mailman. Though if the mailman had delivered it, it's entirely possible that the mailman would have had a better idea of its contents than Sean did.

Apparently the art teacher had been trying to get Sean and Kegan to take those letters to us for, like, a week or so. They might not have gotten their art talent from me, but it certainly seems that my air-headedness is hereditary.