Column: Deer Basketball

This week I have a story in the paper about a painting event taken place later this month at Legends. I really feel it's amazing to have events like this in a small town.

As much as I would like to go, I don't think that would be the best of ideas. Sure I may go get some pictures and do a little story, but I won't be painting any pictures.

While I'm sure I was blessed with a few nice qualities -- drawing, painting, or anything to do with music are not my specialties.

When I was in grade school, my art teacher was always very kind and encouraging. This was just her way of being nice. My art was awful. The only thing I knew had to do was to draw a stick figure and even those looked horrific. By the time I got to seventh grade, I no longer had a nice teacher who patted me on the back and told me "Good job sport". There was no participation trophy for me.

For my first assignment of the year, we could pick anything we wanted to draw, as long as it was from a magazine. I decided it would be a smart idea to draw a basketball player dunking. What was I thinking? This would be hard for anyone to draw, and I couldn't resort to the faithful stick figure. I had to actually attempt to draw a picture of Michael Jordan gliding through the air. After about two days of class spent working on this I reluctantly finished. It did not look like Michael Jordan, in fact it didn't even look human. It looked more like a deer was trying to eat a basketball. My teacher told me that it was horrible, and to stick to drawing simple things for the rest of year. I'm glad she didn't sugar coat it. I always have the visions of what it should look like in my head, but it does not translate with my hands.

When we moved onto painting, it wasn't much better. I was perfectly fine at coloring in something, but if I had to paint something original, I might as well have stood 20 feet from the painting and hurled buckets of paint at it. At least that way I could have the hopes of it looking like a cool piece of modern art.

Seventh grade was the last time I ever took an art class. I think this was best for myself, and the instructors.

I thought maybe I could give it a shot at the art event, but I don't want to be a distraction. People would feel sorry for me and that's not what the night should be about. It should be about smiling, laughing, and fun, not deer trying to eat or dunk basketballs. There could always be the chance that it would be like my thoughts on food when I was a kid. I hated meatloaf, pork chops, and cabbage rolls. Now I love all three. I seriously doubt my skills have increased with age, but that previous sentence did make me really want cabbage rolls.

I also just read there is an upcoming singing competition. I might have to run far away from this one too. When I'm in the shower I think I'm the songbird of my generation, while in fact it is the opposite. If dogs are barking around town, I must be driving by singing at the top of my lungs.

I'll just stick with the stories and taking pictures.