Part of a Part of My Own Self
Narrative:
(Self narrative, taken from a tape of
me talking to myself. Context: I am very tired, I did some modest editing, and
the laughs are taken out.)
How do I fit myself into a neat and tidy box, effectively leaving out all that
makes me me, and repackage the leftover bits and pieces of my life to portray
myself as some thing to be publicly viewed? I guess this is a self story, a very
small self story, a minor chunk of life that will probably say a lot about me:
I was three when I recall it first happening. Disney World had been everything
imagined and more to my three year old eyes. That’s what made the trip home so
unbearable, well, among other things. All I remember is the little yellow sticky
pad. And that it was hot and bright outside, and I was struggling. Oh, and I
begged to sit next to the window on the car ride home and after much persistence
had won the seat. My father was driving, Grandpa in the passenger seat and Mom,
my grandmother and myself in the backseat. So wedged between my grandmother and
the bright window I was becoming sleepy and bored and only-child survival mode
kicked in.
I knew I had to occupy myself so I asked Mom for some paper and a pen. I thought
I was an artist then, I truly did. Doug Terry told me a couple years later in
across a round kindergarten table that no, I was not an artist. By then it was
easier to convince me, even if he was a brat with an affinity for eating paste.
But at age three I knew I was an artist. It was in my blood, everyone told me.
Mom was an artist and seemingly had always been, she even taught art to other
artists. And I was her daughter. All this was impressive to me at the time and
so naturally, I aspired to be and was an artist, too. I even made a conscious
effort to draw people with chins and eyebrows. I realized later I always left
off the body though. In reality my drawings of family and friends had finely
crafted chins, but no bodies. Just big heads. With feet and arms. Mr. Potato
Heads, if you will. I digress.
So I had a pen and paper in hand, armed with the innate knowledge that I was an
artist. I remember asking my mother and grandmother what I should draw. This was
a popular game with me. Tinker Bell was the winning answer this time. My mother
and Grandmother would humor me and suggest everything under the sun and I would
not be satisfied with those suggestions until they finally mentioned what I had
wanted to draw all along. The game almost always ended with me in utter
frustration because they weren’t suggesting the best idea. Which was, of
course, my predetermined one. However, with Disney World fresh in all of our
minds, Tinker Bell was an obvious enough possibility and so after little
discussion, there I was, drawing Tinker Bell.
Well, I was trying to draw Tinker Bell. This was quite problematic considering I
only had a blue ink pen and there was nothing blue about her. The yellow paper
was helpful because her hair was supposed to be yellow, but it was unacceptable
for me to just let her body be the same color as her hair. Oh, and nothing about
the drawing looked the way I had wanted it to. Her head was too big and I
wasn’t used to drawing little green dresses because, well, I wasn’t used to
drawing bodies. As I ripped off yellow sticky page after yellow sticky page of
half-drawn fairies with a demented gleam of determinism in my eye, my family
tried to pacify me. Mom in particular decided to be completely destructive and
took the pen and paper into her own hands and drew a perfect image, it might as
well have been from Disney Heaven itself. Of course, I recognized this as an
attack and inevitably, I started to cry. Throwing in bits about how unfair it
was that Mom could do things perfectly and I would never be that good and I
didn’t care and I didn’t need to be that kind of artist anyway...