Saturday, September 5, 2009

A personal moment of remembrance and other peoples' hopes for you.

I posted the Invisible Cities link just a moment ago and said it the melancholy feeling I was experiencing. Why the melancholy? Today I came home from work to find a large, flat package on the kitchen counter addressed to me. Upon opening it, I just stood there in disbelief and a wave of sadness brought tears to my face.
Several months ago I was informed that a teacher I'd had in high school, Mr. Allison, had passed from a heart attack. I was saddened by the loss of someone who believed in all of his students no matter how idiotic they could be at times. In 1987, I'd drawn a really bad caricature of Ronald Reagan for some class project. Mr. Allison really enjoyed the drawing and asked if he could hang it on the wall of the trailer that was our classroom. I had no idea that that picture would hang there for the next twenty-two years.
It was that drawing that I was now holding in my hands. They'd started going through his trailer to clean things out and found the drawing. My mother, who works at the school, was given the picture by co-workers who thought I'd like to have it back.
I never knew just how important that simple, badly-drawn image would be two decades later.
This is for you Mr. Allison.
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Nothing Is Alone

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