Being Creative

Being Creative

When I was in the first grade I had this interesting art teacher whose name I forget. I think it started with an O or something. Though I don’t remember his name, I can picture him perfectly: dark hair, balding at the top of his scalp, a slight buck to his teeth, and always liked to wear a combination of black and white, never any other color.

The way he was interesting was that he was a bit wacky and he had a powerful obsession with Spiderman. I remember when they first released the teaser for the Toby Maguire Spiderman movie and he was so excited he showed us the clip in class. A lot of the students didn’t understand the point of why he showed us the trailer, and there had been a rumor that he got yelled at by the principal for doing so, but I didn’t care. When he showed us the trailer I nearly fell out of my seat. It was the very first time I had seen anything interesting other than Dragonball Z, which I’m not even going to start with because I had been so obsessed I could go on forever about it.

I think that’s when I started looking into the whole superhero genre; the comics, the movies, the video games. That man started a life-long interest in pretty much anything abnormal. I never found anything ordinary interesting, even when I was a small child. My mom even once told me when I was a baby I’d cry whenever anything other than Nickelodeon was on TV. Before my obsession with werewolves started, I was all over the cartoons, and even after the werewolf trend started with me I still was watching the Spiderman cartoon, the Digimon series, and of course DBZ.

The reason I am bringing up this art teacher and how I personally blame him for bringing this stuff into my life is because I was recently reminded of him when I started playing the new Spiderman video game. All those memories came flooding back to me when I started playing that game, and I came to a realization.

Would you like to hear this realization? I’m sure you would.

Something I bet I didn’t mention in my description of my first grade art teacher was that I hated him. Not because I didn’t like the wackiness, or that it bothered me he was so obsessed with comic books and liked to talk about it to the class, but because he could be very mean; specifically to me. At the time I cursed the injustice of it all, thinking that he was just being mean to me for no reason, but later on I realized I wasn’t exactly the saint child in the class and at times he had a reason to be stern with me. An example of how I used to be was that I openly said how the teacher was stupid when he started bashing the animation style of Ed, Edd n’ Eddy. I was a bit of an unruly student, I know.

But there was an even bigger reason why I disliked this teacher. I remember this clearly, because it hurt my feelings quite a bit. I was a bit dramatic when I was little, so sue me.

I remember it clearly. He said to me, “I don’t think you’re a very creative person, Michael.” Now the reason he said this was because I couldn’t come up with anything to draw during free time, so I just sat there writing my name over and over again. When he saw it he said that to me, and it hurt my feelings. Of course eventually I got over it, but since I was reminded of it I’m sharing it with everyone.

Here’s my realization: I proved him wrong. I proved him wrong on nearly every level. Not only did I turn out to be a creative person, I turned out to be just creative enough to have a book published. I wish I could show it to him, not to get back at him or anything, but to be able to impress and prove that even though you may not be a creative child you can certainly grow up to be a creative adult.

That…and to shove it in his face. But that’s just male pride, not any deep-seated passive aggressive anger I have within me. Nooooo, of course not!

-Michael Loring.
http://michaelloring.com/