Painting A Picture Of Mild Obsession

(During the two last years in high school in Germany, you pick two classes as your “major,” for which you have more hours per week and exams count most during graduation. I pick art, and since only nine other people do, and we are all genuinely interested and enthusiastic, and as this is the first art major ever at this school, our art teacher makes class a lot of fun while also educational. For our final project, he allows us to each paint a mural on sections of the walls of his classroom. We get really into it and often spend not only class hours but also breaks painting. One day we go a bit too far, though.)

Art Teacher: “Okay, guys. Class is officially over. Pack up your brushes and clean up.”

Student #1: “But I just need to finish this bit! I’ll never be able to mix this colour right!”

Me: “I just got into the zone! Let us stay!”

Art Teacher: *sighs* “Okay, you can stay for break, but after that I have another class in here, so have everything cleaned by then!”

(We promise, yet somehow forget. Not a problem, since the next class has to be shifted to another room for whatever reason, and our teacher completely forgets about us staying during break. Ninety minutes later, after finishing his class, he comes back into the room to find us still painting.)

Art Teacher: “Wait, you’re all still here?! Do you have a free period right now?”

Me: “Uh… No. We forgot.”

Art Teacher: “You forgot to go to your classes because of painting?!”

Student #2: “Oops?”

Art Teacher: “I’m going to get into so much trouble for this.”

Student #1: “Can’t we just all say we skipped class?”

Me: “Yeah, nobody knows we were in here. We could’ve just gone to get fast food or something.”

Student #2: “Yeah, it wouldn’t be fair to get you in trouble for us messing up.”

Art Teacher: “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear this conversation, but I’ll also not talk to the principal or your other teachers until tomorrow. You guys decide whatever you want to do.”

(We agreed to stick with the lie of skipping class, and we all got detention for it. Retrospectively, I have to wonder if our art teacher told the principal the truth, though, since detention mysteriously got scheduled in the art classroom, so we could just spend it painting even more. I went to visit our art teacher years after graduating, and our murals were still there.)