In my imagination I saw art. On the page, I only saw compliance. On my first day of school they asked me to draw the Over Command symbol. Their symbol was an eye. From a young age I had seen the symbol all around me. It was everywhere. It was in our house, always on our TV. It was on buildings and busses. It was always in your mind. It watched us, I was sure. That first day of school I had wanted to feel something other than what I had felt. I wouldn't be like them, I wouldn't.

    What was in my mind didn't appear on the sheet of white paper that lay on my school desk. In that old school room that smelled of dust, chalk and fear. This was when they broke me. Made me one of them. I'm not one of them any more, they only think I'm one of them.

    How many other children will sit there and feel the same as I did. I drew with my crayons and I saw what I wanted to draw drift out into the air. Just like the hope I had once felt, it evaporated into the sky and had disappeared forever. Little smokey echoes of my conscience left my mind and faded in to the classroom. The space between my thoughts and my actions, corrupted by some invisible power.

    I wanted to see colors. I saw greens, yellows, blues and reds in my mind. I saw the colors on the crayons in front of me, they were all there. How could it happen? How did they control us? In the room, with all the other children, I only saw grey. Drawing the symbol was your initiation. The Over Command's way of breaking you. Children is the classroom surrendered their future to the party. I couldn't help it. As much as I wanted to, as much as I focused on all the things I had seen, my right hand drew the symbol.

    I looked around and saw the same. Children with fear in their eyes scratching the symbol into the paper. Nobody wrote with their left hand. All the other children held up their sheets of paper and I saw the eye. The eye was everywhere, always watching.

    You had no power. Everyone would be relinquish their freedom and the Over Command would control you. Every one was the same. Art is the thing that makes each of us different.

    It's okay though isn't it? Now they can take away what we do, but they can't control our thoughts. They use images, words and fear to control us. Maybe they use more. Maybe we have something controlling us, or maybe, we let them. Our rebellion is in our imagination. Maybe some day we can put on the page again. Use our own imagery and words to fight back.