Artist flips the story on conniving conman
Admittedly, I was more than a little to blame for my situation. When Kristin was asked as an artist to lead a special activity at a local school during the short holiday week, I’d nudged her forward.
“Geez, it’s the week of Thanksgiving,” I said. “No real learning takes place in a three-day week anyhow, so you’d might as well make a pitch for the art world.”
“Yes, I realize that, but I just don’t know if I have time for it,” she replied. “There are so many things I should probably be doing otherwise.”
I knew she had time for it because Kristin, just like everyone else in America, sees the three days before Thanksgiving as little more than 72 hours of occupational paralysis during which nothing of value or substance actually takes place unless it is in direct support of the upcoming holiday. Furthermore, I know my wife well enough to be certain her idle hands would inevitably find their way to the keyboard where an unlimited buffet of Black Friday deals would cause her to flip into an unchecked feeding frenzy. A day in the schools would mean one less day of runaway consumerism.
“Aw, come on, Kristin,” I said. “There are frustrated little artists out there in the classrooms sketching flowers, ponies and, yes, probably even rudimentary portraits of Mick Jagger just waiting for someone like you to swoop in and change their lives.”
She took the bait. Within a few days, she was planning an activity akin to the creation of the Sistine Chapel. Kristin tends to think big on projects like this. When I came home from work one day to find her winding yards of my duct tape around a cardboard and craft paper blob that looked like a scale model of what a brontosaur might have left behind after a Thanksgiving feast of its own, I had to ask for details.
“I’m leading an origami project where the kids will make paper cranes,” she said.
“Are the cranes the size of pterodactyls?” I asked.
“Oh, geez, no! This is actually a tree, and the cranes are going to hang from the tree!” she said. “I just need you to help me figure out a way to make this thing stand up.”
“I’ve got it,” I said. “It’ll stand quite nicely if we prop it up in the corner of a dumpster.”
“I know, I know. It’s terrible,” she laughed. “I really want to do the crane thing, but I need a way to display all of the students’ work, and hanging them from a tree would be ideal. Could you make me a tree?”
And so I promised, a full five weeks prior to the event, to conjure a tree of some sort from the vast artless recesses of my mind. True to all my projects of any sort ever, my inspiration arrived two days before the deadline. I spent my entire Sunday not in a hunting blind, not in front of a ball game with bowl of tortilla chips on my lap, and most certainly not in front of a computer screen filled with Black Friday deals. Instead, I toiled in the frigid confines of my unheated garage, cobbling together a crane roost from busted-up wooden pallets and bits and pieces of scrap left over from my son-in-law’s summer-long fencing project.
Only as the last nail was driven did I come to the realization Kristin had successfully conned the conman himself — a comical reminder that all is fair in love and war.
Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John at jlorson@alonovus.com.