It’s not often that I go to a public event where my faith in the youth of today actually gets restored. As some of you are aware, I also run a small manga publishing thing called OzTAKU, and we fund that by running drawing classes all over Victoria.

So, when we were contacted by the City of Melbourne to do a class, it wasn’t really a surprise, and we readily agreed. The class was yesterday, at the Osaka Twilight Festival.

It had all the regular assortment of stuff you get at a cultural festival. Cheesy music, deep fried ethnicity and teeny whores running around. There were a couple of Loligoths, which were pretty easy on the eye, but over all it was mostly a family affair.

So Trey & I are doing our schtick, teaching people how to draw and traumatising children in a process we’ve termed “Edutraumatization”. Along with explaining the rigidly geometric way in which Manga comics are actually constructed, we liberally pepper in horrifying facts about why Barbie would die writhing in agony, and how all the children have freakishly large ears.

Trey & Avi Teaching

We’re between classes when we notice one particularly bright young spark who is actually well above the level that we teach classes at just sitting their idly doodling. A small, 14 year old Asian emo (we knew, because her Tshirt said so, and she was wearing socks on her arms) nicknamed “Pie”. As in the kind you eat. Draw what inferences you like. She also had a brother, who was nick nameless.

These kids were, for want of a better word, precocious. Actually “fiercely intelligent and cynical” would probably express it better.

Now, Trey & I, we’re educated guys. Voracious readers of political, philosophical and scientific literature (also known as “subscriptions to FHM and Wired magazines”), and these kids were managing to go at us toe-to-toe, talking about Nietzsche & Dostoyevsky.
It was actually really quite refreshing, and gave me some hope for the youth of today, to know that they’re not all slack jawed morons who are picking up on MySpace when they take time out from their busy iPod schedules to SMS someone and complain about the latest Veronica’s album.

And I get the feeling that in turn, these kids appreciated some adults not talking down to them and assuming they were idiots because they weren’t old enough to legally vote or commit vehicular homicide due to being DUI.