Diddly Design

I tend to spend some of my time working on what might call “art” though others, may simply believe to be some kind of hand spasm I had while holding a pencil. Though apparently today, a spasm on paper, or canvas can be considered art, the days have long since past where artists needed to put a great deal of effort into their work to receive some recognition. But now, any stripling with a ratty jacket and a beard can tape some yarn onto a pizza box and call it art.

Though I occasionally doodle, I do it as a hobby, rather than trying to make a career out of it. So, a lot of the time I may just jot something down in a sketch book, then not draw anything again for a week or more. Yet, as a child I would apparently try and fill any empty sheet of paper with some kind of visual representation of my insane imagination. A lot of my work usually consisted of atomically incorrect felines, often wearing sun glasses, because they were in effect “cool cats.” Because when you are a child, a pair of Blues Brothers’ style sunglasses was the definition of what it was to be cool, or perhaps it was just me who believed that.

Anyhow, during elementary school, it seemed that less was emphasized on reading, and more one things being covered in glitter and macaroni, or perhaps I was in the wrong classroom. Whenever we had some free time, I was usually choose to doodle, even doing so on the blank spaces of the practice TAAS test. “What?! A blank space? I’ll remedy that!” sounds like something I may have blurted aloud once I finished that pancake of a test.

On the occasions when we were assigned to draw something, or had the option of drawing something for class, I would nearly wet myself with excitement. My first memory of such an occasion was back in the first grade, when I was attending Memorial Primary in New Braunfels. From what I remember we were supposed to draw some kind of a representation of what people did on their summer vacation. Being the realistic young lad that I was, I choose something rather sensible and mainstream: A cat riding a wave on a surfboard. What else do cats do in the summer?

The picture was fairly basic, two waves, two fish, a towel, a cat, and a mighty happy sun. Like the cat, the sun also sported a pair of sunglasses and had a refreshing drink in his hand. Now, despite the complete lack of any kind of proper depth, or lighting properties, my teacher found a fault with my picture that she decided to bring to my attention. The sun had a brown bottle in his hand, of a refreshing drink, but apparently because I had labeled it as Beer, I had offended everyone in the entire school, and brought shame on the heads of my family. She let the fact that a cat was surfing, and wearing sunglasses slide, but horror of horrors! The sun drinking a beer? How dare he!

Seeing as the sun is 4,570,000,000 years old, I’m fairly sure it’s old enough to drink. But alas, I believe I gave up on the battle, and added the addition of the word “root” to the bottle, allowing for my classmates continuing their non-alcoholic ways for at least another ten years. How was I to know what Sol was a member of AA, and had been trying to stay sober for the last two epochs?


Surely, not even all of Rembrandt's work combined could compare to this.