I Shoulda Stayed at the Bus Station.

Found a box of old pictures and articles.

You wouldn't believe the trouble a stupid little picture like this could cause...especially in the Midwest. 

Let's get one thing straight at the start...I was not looking for trouble. I didn't care enough about the art class or school in general to be causing trouble. It was my senior year and I was getting enough hassle at home over my grades and coming home late. I wasn't some kinda rebel...I was bored.

When I say bored, I don't mean a kind of romantic teenage boredom...motivated by a restless intellect chaffing against the restraints of High School. No. I was just plain bored. I hated sitting in a room for six or seven hours a day when I could be chasing a golf ball...or girls.

*

I can only remember one place in school where I felt unfairly restrained...and that was on the football field. One afternoon, we were running scrimmages toward the end of practice. First team offense...second team on defense. I was playing corner and assigned to a wide-out. This kid was at least a foot taller than me. They kept trying to throw him screen passes and I kept busting up the play. I could see it in his eyes...every time his number was called. Worst poker face ever.

"Bartlam! We can't practice the play if you keep breaking it up!"

You don't have to know what a screen pass is or anything about football to understand just how absurd...how utterly absurd an approach to practice this is. So, I just stood around the rest of the afternoon thinking to myself..."no wonder you people suck at this game." With crap like that...culminating in an incident where I only just kept my Daddy from confronting one of these idiot coaches...I decided not to play anymore.** As the next summer ended I was courted by these clowns but, I'd had it with 'em. I spent the football season working so I could buy some new golf clubs.

"You'll always be able to play golf but, the days you can strap on pads and hit somebody are numbered."

"No not really...they sell that stuff at sporting goods stores. I could suit up and execute perfect cross-blocks on shoppers at the grocery store." No...I didn't say that...out loud.

I had kept my grades up enough to play football and golf. By my senior year, even golf couldn't keep me in the chair. Along with the artwork, I found an article about the golf team playing in the 1990 State Championship. I was in the picture but, listed as absent due to sickness. That was nice of coach Wyatt but, the truth is, I had failed geometry. I didn't know he'd done that until a week later when a friend's mother asked if I was feeling better. Ha.

I was even starting to lose my grip on the read and retain classes. I could still retain absolutely everything I read but it's hard to retain what you don't read. I've still got a note written by one of my English teachers in big red letters..."Erik. I'm at a loss with you. Not only was your paper late but, you quoted something you read on a McDonald's place mat."

I didn't care but, don't mistake my disinterest for ethos. This was no protest. I just didn't have any idea what I wanted to do with my life. It's not that I couldn't figure it out. I never contemplated the question. What? Like a career? Get real!

The least vague notion I had was of maybe going to Art School. I did OK in Art Class or, as you might guess by now, I had done OK in there. Things started to come undone in the first semester of my last year. We were turned loose to pursue our own projects. Mine was hanging out. It was so easy to do...there was a radio in there.

I don't remember the first time I got the construction paper and poster paint out but, I do know that I had no intention of turning these things in. I liked 'em. I still do...the one above, strikes me as especially cohesive and evocative. I don't know.

I was just goofing around...which is the first reason, the art teacher, Mr Duncan?, Doogan?, Deedlebell? hated them.*** I wasn't spending enough...meaning any...time on my assigned projects. That was a reasonable point. It was a class after all.

"Stop the nonsense and get back to work on your project...whatever that it is."

I fully intended to get back on my project once I figured out what it was...maybe another mountainous valley painted entirely with shades of purple. I could take a mulligan on the assignment involving our favorite colour..."reveal something about your character." Boooooring. Where's the construction paper...just while I think about it.

Coupla day's later Mr Dundard walks by, sees the slide there...and goes berserk. At first I'm thinking...it's his class...he told me to stop...I should've done a better job of hiding them...then he pissed me off.

"I'm not gonna have this pseudo-intellectual crap coming out of my class!"

Pseudo Intellectual? They're stick figures and bright colours! They offer nothing to the intellect. They're anti-intellectual you nob. I was pissed sideways by Mr Dolt's naming and assessing my motivations. Nevermind he was butchering them. It was his trespass and violation of the most precious piece of private property a person owns...that between their ears. This is what's going through my mind when he snatches up another Slide painting...this one on canvas board.

"These are my materials, my canvas board and I wont have it wasted." Then he ripped it in two. Ha Ha What? He was wired for sound y'all...was I about to get the horns? It was hilarious.

The thing you have to understand about Mr.Dellder...he painted trees.Trees that were meant to look like trees in the winter, summer, spring.....fall. Sometimes they were on hills. No matter the season or elevation there was always a small red bird perched on a limb.

Mr. Dabdag had studied Art on a Baseball Scholarship. The school's mascot was a Cardinal. The Art College at Ball State University is not Savanna College of Art and Design but, it's still an art school. You can image how well his trees were received by the cool kids in the Quad. How it stung when he saw the grades of those who were doing pieces that "anybody could do....you can't even tell what it is."

Maybe I had accidentally opened a few wounds. Whatever. They were doodles...good doodles...they were not a hill I intended to die on. I wasn't even turning them in for the love of cup cakes. I gathered up the survivors and shoved them in my bag.

That would've been the end of it if Mr.Dobbins had done a better job gettin' rid of the rent painting but, he'd had his catharsis. He was spent. He just tossed the pieces on the table and left.  One of the other kids in the room, an anxious trouble maker, gathered up the pieces and left.

It wasn't until the next morning, headed to my locker, that I saw, in the otherwise empty trophy  cabinet, my picture on display...in two pieces. Hah. It was funny and I appreciated it but, on the other hand, all I could see was hassle. Mr Duderdoo couldn't help himself from lashing out at the fruity art, and my buddy couldn't resist a cause. I'm sure he would rather have been running a pirate radio station but, you take what you can get in a small town. I didn't care what Mr Doodoo thought of the doodles and I had no interest in some kinda corny high school protest. If I'd just stopped doodling when was told to.

The three of us ended up in the Principals office to hash it out. How stupid is that?

I didn't go to Art School.



* The Teenage Martha...fine, fine, fiiiine as frog hair.
* * During a similar incident, where I had refused similarly stupid instructions..a coach said I was "dumb as horse." This from somebody in sans-a-belt shorts, who continuously tried to run bubble screens without the bubble.
*** It's amazing how my brain has a ridiculous capacity to remember things and how my mind, for reasons unknown, will scrub it clean in parts...I wish I could control it like a Super Power.