A few weeks ago, I found a blog from storyteller, Matthew Dicks. You can check out his blog at matthewdicks.com. One of the posts asked the question “If you could recover a single object from your past, what would it be?”
That one question has stuck with me ever since.
Immediately the one thing that I would want from my past without question would be my dad. He passed away 5 years ago this past June and I miss him every day. Bringing him back would put us through giving him up again and I would not want to take him away from being with Christ now.
So, the question still remained.
I went over my childhood. Growing up my brother and I had HUNDREDS of Hot Wheel cars. (I collect those still today and the boys wonder why I don’t open them up and play with them.) So that wouldn’t be it.
For my birthday sometime around 8-10, my parents gave me a go-cart and then a few years later, a motorcycle. I can get those today if I wanted one so that wouldn’t be it.
One thing that I remember doing almost my entire life is drawing and more specifically drawing cars. My art teacher in high school even told me that if I drew one more project of a car, she was going to fail me on that project. (My Art IV class painted a mural on the wall of the Vice Principals office and guess what, it had a car in it!) I loved to draw cars. My youngest son Jason shares that love of drawing cars with me.
Around the time I was a sophomore in high school, I discovered Cartoons Magazine. It was a comic book ALL about cars. It even had a great section by George Trosley on how to draw cars. This took my love of cars and my skills for drawing them to the next level and beyond. I couldn’t wait for each new issue to come out. I had a huge collection of these magazines with the pages worn out from me reading them over and over.
After I got my own car and started college, my passion for drawing cars faded. I went from drawing for the love of creating something, to a job doing technical drawings and blueprints.
Around this time too, Cartoons magazine stopped coming out and my collection of past issues eventually found its way into the trash. The light had gone out. My love of drawing, led me into a career where I was able to draw and get paid for it, but often when you take a hobby and make it into a job, you lose the passion for the hobby.
Jason brought back my passion…
He has pictures on his bedroom wall of cars that he has drawn. He has a sketch book of pictures he has drawn. How could that not ignite my passion again?
So, that being said, I went out and got a sketchbook of my own. I had to see if I could still take a pencil and paper and create something even if it was small. I had to know if I still had the ability to pull an image out of my mind and put it down on paper.
My passion returned. I loved showing Jason my sketchbook and the first drawing in it. He was blown away and ran to get his sketchbook and start drawing.
So, Matthew Dicks, to answer your question of what would I want to recover from my past, it would be hands down, my collection of Cartoons Magazine. Those pages fueled my love of drawing cars, led me to a career in drafting, and now a shared passion with me and my youngest son.
Ironically, Cartoons Magazine has started up again…..
Keith
KWHITE75 