Thanks, Dad...

   

   Let me start this off by saying that I am not blaming anything on my parents. I'm too old for that shit, and what's the point of that anyway. 

   My parents are just people who tried to raise me to the best of their skill, ability, and resources. 

   Good or bad, it was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. We (I have a sister who is a few years younger than me) never went hungry, we had new clothes for school and always had a roof over our heads. We were punished if we misbehaved, but we weren't abused. 

   There are those who would argue that point, if measured by today's standards, however. I feel like I was raised with a reasonable understanding of what is right and what is wrong. 

   My parents conceived me during a night of drunken fumbling on a hot summer night in Texas of 1966. Whether they had any intention of getting married and starting a family became moot at that point.

   But, this is not a history of me. I am approaching fifty-five years of age, and a lot has happened. I may bring up some stuff from time to time, but I will leave a lot of it to stay in the past.  

   I do want to tell you about one event that I believe has, and continues to have a great effect on my life.

   As a kid, I used to draw all the time. I'd draw on any blank paper that I could get my hands on, whether it was a sketchpad, or the facing pages of a book.

   I even checked out books from the library on how to draw. (but, I never drew in library books.) 

   One day, my father said to me, "Drawing is fine for your spare time, but you can never do it as a job".

    Of all the things that have happened in my childhood, this one thing has stayed with me. This one event is the one of the most defining moments of my life.

   I still draw, but no where near as much as I used to. I rarely finish my drawings. I have sketchbooks full of doodles and scrawls. Mostly they are only half full. (half empty?) 

   I have brand new sketchbooks, that sit untouched on my shelf. I have a portfolio case of pencil drawings and a desk full of all kinds of drawing tools, pens, and pencils. I dabbled briefly with digital art and tattooing.

   One day, when I was in my thirties, and working as a chef, my father called me from Key West, where he always went to Fantasy Fest, a huge party held the week of Halloween. He went every single year. He actually died there.

   He told me to turn on my computer and go to a website. It was a crude Webcam that was set up to broadcast video of a guy who was airbrushing designs onto the bare breasts of the enthusiastic young women who engaged his services.

   My father then asked me, "Do you know how to airbrush?"

   I could only tell him that I didn't have one, but I understood the concept in an academic sense. 

   A few years later, he called me up and asked me if I would go to autobody school, on his dime. 

   He'd seen some of the shows where artists were airbrushing designs on cars, and I wonder if he was thinking about that day, and what he said to me all those years ago. I turned him down.

   It was a year or two later that he passed away. We had had a falling out over a job I had taken, that, as he predicted, wouldn't last long, it didn't, and we never spoke after that.

   I have a lot of creative ideas for things that I want to do. Things I want to build. I still do creative things, with varying degrees of completion. I still draw, but I never do it as a job.

Thanks, Dad.