The art award was a big deal. The level of fanfare was off the charts. If you were one of the lucky winners, you’d have some fantastic swag to prove your artistic bona fides, including a Certificate of Recognition, a placement ribbon, and an American flag pin. Yeah, just like the one politicians tack on to their lapels to prove how patriotic they are.
Most importantly, it meant getting your picture in the local newspaper.
My family did the usual thing. They snapped Polaroids of me proudly displaying my masterpiece. My image was stuck on the fridge, mailed off to relatives, and forever immortalized on a plastic photo mug that sits on a shelf next to my desk as I write this.
The theme that year in the Americanism Fine Arts Contest sponsored by the PTA in Mill Village, Pennsylvania was, “Look Out Your Window…”.
When I looked out my window, I apparently saw my dog, a spider, and a barn. Or maybe the spider was a puppy. I think the dog was having puppies. Or spider puppies. Who knows. I was only 5 years old. I liked drawing pictures of my dog, but I drew like shit. Everything looked like spiders and boxes.
To tell the truth, I don’t remember winning the 1st Place in my school’s kindergarten class. I have zero recollection of going on to win 2nd Place in the Erie County kindergarten bracket. I have no memory of posing for photos while holding my depiction of boxes and spider puppies aloft.
What I recall with the most clarity, which is to say not much clarity at all, but somewhat less blurry than the rest, is the kid sitting next to me in the group photo taken for the newspaper.
Yeah. That’s me and my boy, Arnold. Well, at least he was my boy back in the late 70s. Arnold won 2nd Place, which obviously made us the reigning king and queen of the nascent art scene forming in Mrs. Stubbe’s morning kindergarten class. Some days, we’d sit together on the school bus that transported us home each day, talking about whatever it is 5-year-old art luminaries discuss on crowded yellow school buses. Other times, we’d chat on the phone as old-timey people back 1978 did while donning plaid pant suits in thick clouds of cigarette smoke.
The following year, I attended 1st grade in another town, nearby Cambridge Springs. As far as I know, Arnold hung back at Mill Village. Or maybe he moved, too. I’ll never know. I changed schools and towns and states each year until 4th grade. We were pals for a moment. A moment that goes by too fast to really be considered a moment at all. Just a drop in the blurry watercolor of childhood.
Yet, that’s what I remember most from those heady art contest days. Not the awards. Not the drawing itself, which I only recall thanks to the photos my mother and grandparents snapped. And not the attention they lavished upon me, or the pride we collectively took in my little blue ribbon and newspaper clippings. What I remember most is the name of a kid I knew for barely a minute, and then never saw again.
I lost the blue ribbon somewhere in the whirlwind of life. I still have the little American flag pin. I currently have no use for it, though I’ll probably stick it on once I’m elected president. Just kidding! A woman can’t be president. Although, I did get myself a felony back in my juvenile delinquent era, so maybe I’ve still got a shot.
My art and my writing still often reflect my sense of Americanism, such as it is these days. And often is inspired by what I see outside my window, more or less. I don’t talk to anyone on the phone anymore because seriously, talking on the phone is super weird and who does that anymore? I still take the bus, but usually, I’m alone and reading a book, hoping no one talks to me or sits next to me.
Maybe this is just a little story that hopes Arnold is still around and that wherever he is, he’s having a good day. But there’s probably a metaphor in here somewhere if you want to see it. Something about awards and recognition being fleeting things and of little importance in the end. Or about why we should encourage kids to make art. Or how the people in our lives matter even when they’re just passing through. I could even go off about how my sense of Americanism has been shattered repeatedly in the decades since then, or how the view out my window these days looks out on gray English skies and a blooming mushroom cloud of fascism. Or maybe it’s just another GenXer waxing nostalgic.
It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we should all spend a little more time looking out our window and drawing pictures of dogs.