You know you're getting older when ...
I got the strangest email last December from a lady who said she had Googled my name, found my website and wanted to know if I was the same person ...
She had been going through her elderly parent's belongings and came across a photo of some art that they had commissioned decades before. She didn't have the original art, just a photo of it. She suspected that I was the artist, and attached the photo to her email.
It was a watercolor and pen and ink drawing of a store front. The kind of store front you'd see on a downtown Atlanta street years ago.
I didn't recognize it, and intended to reply back to her that I wasn't who she was looking for.
But it was an interesting piece, so before I replied, I zoomed in for a closer inspection. And there it was, as big as life, in the lower right hand corner: my signature and a date, 10/85! Or 83 ... I can't read my own handwriting! And I have no recollection of ever doing it!
Good grief!
I'm betting that the old folks home will be lots of fun for me ... maybe all the things I've forgotten over the years will come flooding back and I can re-live it all again! I won't even need a TV in my room! I just hope I never did anything illegal or immoral ...
... nah ... couldn't have done anything like that ... I would've remembered THAT!
I know, because I actually did something illegal ... I stole something once when I was in first or second grade and it's haunted me to this very day ...
It was in the Woolworth's in downtown Atlanta. I was looking at the packages of Barbie doll outfits, and one of the packages had ripped open and a little straw purse and some shoes had spilled out. And I picked them up and stuffed them into my pocket. Never told a soul. Now, 60 years later, I still have them in my Barbie doll case in the top of my closet. And now that I've talked about it, it will keep me awake tonight!
I thought confessing it in a public space would help clear up my guilty conscious ... but, NO! Aaaarrrggh!!
Just consider yourself warned ... if I ever come to your house, be sure to lock up the silver and anything small and valuable ... you never know when I might return to a life of crime ... Lord, help me!
And if I ever painted or drew art for you ... and one day you mention it to me and I get that blank, I-have-no-idea-of-what-you-speak look on my face ... please don't get angry. I didn't forget it ... I just tucked it away in the back of my brain.
I'm saving it for when I'm sitting in the rocker on the porch of the Shady Dale Nursing Home and I'll be rocking and smiling and painting and drawing it all over again in my head!
I'll need it to help me try to forget my criminal past ... hopefully the law won't catch up with me ... though I suspect I'd sleep better if I'd just go ahead and turn myself in ...
