When I was in middle school, we had a teacher who was into teaching creativity (Mrs. Millirons?) and she would have kinds of interesting, out of the box things for us to do. I remember one time I convinced her to let me work on designing my latest Dungeons & Dragons adventure. She said "What exactly would that entail?" and I impassionately explained how I would be using graph paper to lay-out the dungeon my friends' characters would explore and then populate it with monsters to fight and treasure to find. She reluctantly replied "I'm okay with that"... Not sure what happened to that work of art but I remember being proud of coming up with this one room in which there were these statues that came to life after the characters passed them and would then fight the characters unless they retreated.
Anyway, what I really wanted to share was a strong memory of a different day when she asked the class to come up with novelty greeting cards. Like a card for an occasion that is interesting but not usually celebrated or commemorated formally. I came up with "Congratulations on the First Day you Shave" (Gee, I wonder why a 6th grade boy would think of such a thing?). So I drew a couple of pictures of shaving cream, razors, etc. and on the inside I quoted from a song I had heard on the Dr. Demento show: "Shaving Cream, be nice and clean, shave every day and you'll always look keen". I remember Mrs. Millirons laughing out loud at that and I could tell she thought I was being clever and then I felt guilty because it wasn't my original composition.
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| AI generated art from my prompt "Boy creating novelty greeting cards" |
Fast forward to a few days ago when Irene got her hair cut. Oddly enough my first thought was how cool it'd be if there was a Hallmark card that said "First time you get a haircut after having all your hair fall out during chemo." (Don't worry, I didn't just blurt this thought out without context (classic Rideout move). I told her the full sequence of events (well, minus the Dungeons and Dragons part) to her the next day).
Strange and cool how a memory laid down in 6th grade can be the seed for thoughts 40 years later, huh?
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