At the school, faculty members got a five-year review of their teaching, scholarship, and community service, regardless of whether they had tenure. I’d decided to retire before my next review but told no one. That knowledge let me spring a surprise on folks in those corseted corridors.

For less than three dollars, I bought a box of children’s face paints. The six colors—    red, yellow, blue, green, black, and white—proved enough for my purposes. I pulled the box out of a desk drawer every morning and painted my face before teaching. The school had rules to discourage novelty, but in it had failed to regulate face-painting.

I went to town. A bolt of lightning slashed down my cheek one day. A heart beamed from one cheek the next day. I painted a night sky, complete with stars and a quarter moon, on my forehead another time. A red question mark in the middle of my forehead garnered the most stares.

Students’ reactions held some surprises for me. I learned that a painted face trumped a brown skin when it came to their perceptions. The flowers and goldfish took them by surprise, threw off their expectations. The bees and spiders on my face swept away, or at least suspended, preconceptions. My students could take me in with less racial garbage. We had a straighter shot at connection.

The images also let me add sauce to the vocabulary I served up in Spanish 101. Few of my students forgot the meaning of bombilla after seeing the yellow lightbulb outlined in black on my forehead.

My two-dollar box of paints also helped me address the broader issues of college life. It provided a platform on which to stand against the frequent life-sapping grayness of academia. College teaching and learning rank as serious business, but they need not bury one alive.

I admit that I relished hard looks from some administrators because I knew my retirement plans put me beyond their reach. Faculty meetings seemed less poisonous when I joined them with a giant sunflower painted on my left cheek. 

Yes, I savored the disapproval of those two years, but also the fun. One day, I painted my nose black and drew whiskers and a ruff on my face. A student asked, “Que pasa con la cara?”

“It’s International Cat Day,” I replied, “and I’m celebrating.” Only later did I learn that there is indeed such a holiday.

The face painting drew me closer to my students, who anticipated fun and, one told me later, bet on what I’d paint next. After years shrouded in grayness, my paint box also gave me a foretaste of rainbows that could come my way with retirement.   
 

Flashlight in the Fog

Short Stories

by Patricia Ann Bowen

  Flashlight in the Fog holds twenty short stories, micro, flash, and longer tales of romance, fantasy, and dark, dark, dark fiction put to the page. Peek into the mind of a magician, a bride-to-be, a traveler, and more. Explore their themes of adventure, cultural misadventures, and coming to terms with life’s span from coming-of-age to aging. All have been previously chosen for publication in online magazines and anthologies, and are now compiled here in one volume.  When you have just a few minutes or an hour to spare, whether you’re in the mood for a laugh, a cry, or some goose bumps, reach for this collection with more engaging stories from the author of Unintended Consequences. Author Patricia Ann Bowen has published a medical time travel trilogy, a short story collection about women in challenging circumstances, and a serialized beach read. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies and numerous online publications. She’s taught short story writing in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), and launched and led The Retro Writers, a critique group of short story writers for the Atlanta Writers’ Club. She resides on a small island in South Carolina, has four sons, grandkids all over the world, and two cats in the yard.  You can connect with her and her other work at www.patriciabowen.com. Flashlight in the Fog is available from Amazon.

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