Tales from "That Kid That Can Draw Real Good"

Once, some kid I went to elementary school with, way, way the heck back in the late 1970s, moved to my hometown. He was nice enough, I guess. He certainly liked me at first, because I was pretty friendly. Non-judgmental, even, so I always tried to be nice to new kids.

At any rate, I was reasonably well known in that very small town as "that kid that can draw real good." So this new kid suddenly decided, soon after meeting everyone else in our sixth grade class, that I should be the one to teach him how to "draw real good," too. Then, he reasoned, everyone might actually like him better. Ooo-kay....

Well, I actually had absolutely no idea how to do that! None. None at all. In fact, doing artwork is simply something that I was able to do, I think, before I could even legibly write my own name. I even remember my mother giving me scrap paper and crayons and using the "end table" at the side of the couch, to sit and draw for hours when I was only four years old or so.

My parents apparently really liked that about me, because, as they'd often say to adults who visited the house, "Oh, this one will sit quietly and draw for hours!" See, they had six kids altogether, so I guess it was quite a bonus that there was a way to keep at least one of us out of their hair for long periods of time.

But anyway, I told this new kid in the sixth grade that I had no idea how to teach him how to draw. He didn't listen, of course. Didn't wanna hear it. And he was extremely persistent. So, I basically had to drop all my other sixth grade friends that year, so that I could somehow attempt to "teach" this new kid how to "draw real good."

Didn't work.

After a few months of spending all kinds of free time with this new kid to teach him how to "draw real good," he ended up being extremely frustrated, because he simply could not, according to him, draw as well as I could. So I told him I was sorry. What else could I do? I was just a dumb little kid in the sixth grade, after all! Eventually, thank God, the new kid and I drifted apart. Or rather, he finally just gave up and left me alone.

Thank God.

Then... the years rolled by. Life got hard. Life even got downright crappy sometimes. And here, I thought life had already been crappy enough when I was just a kid! Oh, I worked as a professional artist for a while, but it's usually not as high a paid job as most people tend to think. In most cases, in fact, most companies do not want to pay an artist full time wages when they can instead pay them for individual odd jobs. But that also means no pension. No insurance. No security. So most artistically gifted people just end up doing their artwork on the side. And that's just how life sucks for a lot of people. That's just the way it is.

Believe it or not, even Michelangelo had an often extremely tumultuous relationship with Pope Julius II while he was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Just for starters, Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor, not a painter, but the Pope wanted the ceiling painted. Then, they fought over the overall design. Then... the Pope was constantly upset because it took Michelangelo literally years to finish the enormous amount of work. And he didn't get paid a whole lot during that time. Sometimes he didn't even get paid at all. And that, kids, is just life in the real world, quite often.

So anyway, I went from my very first small town job working at the local grocery store, to a succession of slightly bigger towns and cities and I worked at all sorts of stupid jobs, most of which I thoroughly hated, until I eventually ended up where I'm currently at, all these sucky years later. And then... all at once, it seemed, in or around 2008 or so, I suddenly started getting tons of friend requests on Facebook from all sorts of people from my hometown that I still have not even physically seen in literally decades.

Okay. Swell. It's always nice to reconnect with nice people, of course. But then... that kid from the sixth grade friended me, too. And that was fine too, I guess. Hey! "People change," they say, right? I mean, we're all "adults" now, right? Water under ye olde bridge, eh?

Sure!

But then... one day this jerky new kid who had basically monopolized all my free time for literally months way back in the sixth grade one day found me on social media. Then, before long, he decided to private message me. Seemed he'd studied my Facebook profile, that clearly states that I'm a "teetotaler." Mind you, my profile does not say, I hate your stinking guts if you're not a teetotaler like me. It just says I am one.

Just in case you don't already know, being a teetotaler just means that I'm someone who never drinks alcohol. In my case, it also means I never smoke anything. And I don't do any kind of drug that isn't prescribed by a physician or isn't available over the counter at a pharmacy. NO IFS, ANDS, OR BUTS. No excuses. Zero. None. Na-da.

But hey. That's just me, right? "You do you, and I do me." Swell! Words to live by.

Only... this kid... this now overgrown man... type... person... that I haven't even laid eyes on for several decades, writes and tells me, "You know, I used to shoot up in the alley during the 90s, man." Apparently, he started with pot. Then he moved on to cocaine, and a lot of other stuff too, I guess.

"Okay. I'm sorry to hear that. I hope everything is going better for you nowadays. But... what does that have to do with me?"

Then, in a disgruntled huff, he unfriended me. Ooo-kay. Just like in the sixth grade, the new kid in town was totally and completely there one minute, and then he was just plain gone the next. Ooo-kay. Whatever!