Peter was an excellent artist, but he liked to draw things on the back seats of school buses, and some people at school, including Coach Rubens, had had to clean them. When the entire team celebrated a win at Peter’s house and his coach discovered the drawings on his walls, he decided to teach him a lesson.
“Who wants cheeseburgers?” Peter’s father, Mr. Markson, called out to the high school kids in his backyard. Peter was part of the basketball team at school, and he loved it, especially when they won, because his father loved to celebrate every win at their house with the entire team. This was such an occasion.
Everyone was gathered at his house, and the kids were celebrating. Even Coach Rubens was invited and he helped to cook. But he had gone inside for a second and saw that the guest bathroom was occupied. He asked Mrs. Markson if he could go upstairs to use their bathroom, and she nodded with a big smile.
“Come on, kid. It’s time to clean all your drawings,” Coach Rubens said in a singsong voice.
He used the facilities and was about to go back down until something in the hallway called his attention. It was a room with drawings on the wall, and it had to belong to Peter. Of course, teenagers typically had things on their walls like art and posters, and Peter was no different.
But these drawings were highly familiar to the coach. Someone had been drawing them on the back seats of the school buses, including the one they used to go to games. Coach Rubens did his best to erase and even told the boys not to keep drawing, but the pictures appeared again. Moreover, none of them would reveal who the culprit was, and he had finally found him. It was Peter all along.
Peter had just gotten home the next day when his mom called out, “Darling, Coach Rubens is here for you.”
He frowned because there was no practice that day, but he went down and saw the coach in the doorway. He was holding a rag and bucket. He also had a big smile on his face.
“What’s going on, coach?” the teenager asked, furrowing his brows in confusion.
Coach Rubens raised the things in his hands and with a massive smile on his face said, “Come on, kid. It’s time to clean all your drawings.”
Peter’s jaw dropped, and he stared back at his mom as if she could save him. But her husband had told her everything, and she shrugged her shoulders. “That’ll teach you not to vandalize school property,” she said and went away to the kitchen.
Peter couldn’t do anything but follow the coach, get into his car, and go back to school, where all the buses were parked for the day. He had to clean every drawing he made over the last weeks, which took hours.
“Can I go home?” Peter asked once he was finished, but the coach pursed his lips and shook his head.
“Not yet. We have somewhere else to be,” he revealed and gestured for Peter to follow him back to the car. The boy followed slowly with his shoulders hunched and got in the car.
Surprisingly, Coach Rubens brought him to the Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, and the teenager didn’t know what was going on. But the coach didn’t stop and went inside, only telling him to follow along.
They stopped in a hallway with white walls, and Coach Rubens produced a pack of markers from his jacket. “Here, kid. Time to get to work,” the older man stated and smiled at Peter.
“What?” he said, looking at the hallway and back at the markers with a baffled expression.
“It’s time to keep drawing. You can come here every afternoon after school and basketball practice to draw on the walls. You have carte blanche to draw anything, as long as it’s family-friendly, of course,” Coach Rubens continued, smiling widely.
Peter was surprised but delighted at the idea. It would take him months to complete such a task, but he had time. He took out a black marker and got to work immediately.
Eventually, he met some of the kids, and he even invited them to draw with him. He guided them on what to do and how to make things pretty. They even started using paint aside from the markers. He never drew on buses again, and people loved his work at the hospital.
