My father, a busy surgeon, got a bug up his rear and I was the bug he wanted me to be as busy as. At age ten he (and my mother) watched me spend hours coloring Snow White, Prince Charming, drawing them well on white paper. They saw me as a budding Rembrandt, a great artist, while I wasn’t even a Rube Goldberg. Without asking me if I wanted to go to Campfield’s School of Art, they enrolled me, destroyed my Saturday noon time movies with my friends. From eight in the morning when I had to carry my heavy drawing board to the street car line, struggle to get it and me up the high step, I was angry.
In spite of that, I did try to do well. Mrs. Wolfe, my teacher, saw in the first two classes that my talent did not lie in still life drawing. After only half of the first semester was over, she notified my parents, I should perhaps switch to pottery making. Disappointed, Daddy took my drawing board and pastels down the basement, put them behind some cartons and pushed me harder.
Mother bought me a pretty blue smock that buttoned all the way to the hem and off I went to try to make a vase. The very first time I had to reach into the clay bin, touch the murky gray mess, I almost fell off my stool. Mr. Kling lifted me off and put me on another one in front of a long table. Somebody should have noticed I was too short to reach the floor pedal to work the pottery wheel.
The teacher told me to forget the vase and make a bowl, maybe a cup and saucer. Darn, I had wanted to at least try a vase. To start the bowl I pushed my fist into the center of the blob of clay and then started pulling the sides up, up, higher and higher–until–kerplop, the whole thing fell down. What was left of my bowl, became a jagged flat ash tray. That was the end of art school.
My dear parents had wasted their money and I had wasted my Saturday movie days. They began again but didn’t last long. My daddy got another bright idea. He was a golfer and loved his week-ends. Maybe I will be better at sports, become a champion. He spoke to a patient, Mr. Tamres, who taught golf at Sears on Saturdays and zowie,
Daddy enrolled me and bought what I would need- a golf bag, driver,
1,3,5 irons, chipper and putter. In an open tent set in the back of the sport department, I missed more practice balls than I hit. Because Daddy insisted I also practice my stance and swing on our large back lawn, I was forced to carry the bag to Sears once a week and home again. ‘Daddy, please, please, let me quit lessons,’ I said many times. His ears were blocked. As uncoordinated as I was, Mr. Tamres was willing to keep at me, but I begged him to tell my father that I was never going to be good at golf and he should let me quit. Whatever he said worked and my golf bag and clubs went down the basement behind some cartons, next to the art supplies.
Except for losing the income Mr. Tamres got for baby sitting me, I was sure he was thrilled to try to replace me as I was to have my Saturdays free again. Mother got the idea this time ‘tennis.’ ‘Honey, tennis is easy, you’ll love it. I’ll get you the cutest tennis outfits. Want to take lessons?’
My grimaced face, my hanging head, my stamping foot, answered her question. ‘No!’ I did add, ‘Thank you.’
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