by Larry Low
I’m getting used to that sort of thing from my friend of late … I think it started at some point during my first year at university or was it the last week of my last year at high school. I had this cracked-up dream. It went something like this. I was a little street beggar kind of person with no job, money, or so much as a roof over my head. Then there was my mom and my teachers, who for some weird reason were the size of giants and they said stuff such as "I told you so!" and "Tsk tsk…" Of course, I didn’t think it had anything to do with my future. I was never led to believe that silly dreams could impart the future or would help me rectify the deficiencies in my life. Then on a particular day at school, it just so happened that our teachers began talking about jobs, careers, and other stuff. They were saying students who hadn't yet decided what their careers might be should hurry and latch onto one before university starts.
One of the teachers also brought in a person who never used to care about careers. Just like me. The person, whose name was Antonio, talked about how he started to think a career would be very important and he explained how he got where he was today. He’s now a successful architect. He put a few angles and circles and a couple of triangles on the board just to prove his point.
Then, I started thinking the same way he did and I realized how having a career, instead of just a job, could very well affect me tremendously. For one thing I wouldn't have to ask the dreaded question one more time. Would you like your fries supersized?
In university, I studied hard and never went to parties or late night bars like many of my friends did. Even when I studied hard, I sometimes would just barely pass. I am now working on my doctorate so I can get a job as a professor at Harvard. Dr. Lianna Livingstone. How do you like them onions?
The dream cropped up again during one of my down moments. I believe that the dream was, if not inconsequential, was of little consequence. Perhaps it was the last week of my last year at high school. At the time, I thought nothing of it. How could I have been so wrong? When my dream started doesn’t really matter now, does it? I had a vision that in a former lifetime, I had truly been a street urchin. That could account for why I have been known to skedaddle at the sight of my own shadow.
Now that I think of it, it may have started when I was in grade four and had begun to act up for no apparent reason. At least I had no idea why I was doing things that seemed to get me into constant trouble. I remember that my mother and my teacher, Mrs. Bargemutt, would discuss me as if I were not present. They really didn’t discuss me, you should understand. What they did discuss was what Mrs. Bargemutt, the old battle-axe, persisted in calling - my case. “It’s one of the worst cases,” I have ever encountered the old bat had said on more than one occasion.
I didn’t really understand what they were talking about except that my behaviour was not quite up to scratch.
“You see,” Senora Bargemutt would say slowly as if my mother, a forensic scientist, was somewhat daft.
“Like Pablo, Lianna has the dickens of a time with her drawings. She writes beautiful stories and is a whiz at arithmetic but she can’t draw worth diddly squat. Her drawings are full of triangles and squiggles. I can’t make heads nor tails of them.”
“So?” My mother would reply. “Leave drawing to the artists. I hated drawing when I was a child and I turned out alright.”
“Be that as it may,” Mrs. Bargemutt would sniff giving herself a small shake and then burst into laughter. I rather enjoyed that part for she was much like Santa Claus in that regard but a little differently endowed, you understand. I don’t know why but whenever she laughed like that I wanted to ask my mother if we could have jello with whipped cream for dessert.
After far too many of these meetings to suit me, I suddenly became aware that my mother and I were kindred spirits.
“How would you like to go to private school?” she asked one day as she was driving me home from school.
”Make sure that I don’t have to draw,” was all I said.
“I’ve got a great idea. We’ll find a school that likes abstract art.”
“What the heck is abstract art?”
“My darling,” my mother said. “The beautiful drawings that you have been doing, I would call abstract art.”
“You understand them?”
“Well not entirely,” my mother replied cautiously, “But I do cherish them.”
“That’s a start,” I said. “ Mother, I will let you in on a little secret. I really can draw. I just choose to draw triangles and squiggles.”
“I know you can. Some day the world will debate those triangles and squiggles.”
"Tsk tsk…" Of course, I didn’t think it had anything to do with my future. I never believed that silly dreams could tell the future or if there were problems in my life. Then on that day of school, it just so happened that some of our teachers were talking about jobs, careers, and other stuff I believe I may have mentioned. They were saying people who haven’t yet decided what there careers might be (I was one or them) should hurry and think of one before university starts.
I think I mentioned that at University I studied and never went to parties but did I mention that I would barely pass some subjects? Hopefully that is behind me for I am working on my doctorate so I can get a job as a professor at Harvard. I guess some things turn our okay, if you will only let them.
the end