 THE ANALOG DAYS, WHEN CUTTING AND PASTING ACTUALLY INVOLVED BLADES AND GLUE. | There’s a post that went viral a while ago that reveals a wonderful confusion. The author explains that vaccinating your children is okay because it wouldn’t be the worst thing if your child turned out to be artistic. Her confusion of the words autistic and artistic has resonance for me. After hearing stories of bullying and humiliation that were apparently everyday occurances at my older brother’s summer camp, I quietly expressed to my parents that I was not sure that sleep-away summer camp was my thing. I didn’t really expect them to respect my concerns; I thought my mentioning this was the equivalent of a death row inmate alerting the warden, on his final walk, that he was pretty sure he was innocent. To my surprise, they enrolled me instead at Fiedel’s, an arts-oriented day camp that ran for a number of summers on some sprawling real estate surprisingly close by. It was operated by Roz and Ivan Fiedel, who remain iconic figures in my gallery of treasured childhood experiences. Ivan was a wild-haired, cigar-chomping pianist/composer/improviser, and Roz was a fiercely emotional black-leotard-wearing modern dancer. They were classic beatniks, cultural disrupters by nature, and considered chaos and lunacy a better choice than order and tradition any day of the week. Their embrace of all forms of self-expression as inherently good made their day camp a haven for misfits. It also became known as a surprisingly safe place to send your kid with developmental disabilities. This last detail was the source of some confusion for me. In between the giddy epiphanies and moments of high-octane silliness, a creeping dread began to gather momentum in my impressionable brain. From time to time I would turn, grinning from ear to ear, to the child sitting next to me, looking for a moment of recognition, a non-verbal isn’t-this-place-crazy? moment, and sometimes see the impenetrable look of a kid who was completely checked out. It took me a while to notice that the front license plates on the small buses that picked us up and took us home all had an uplifting slogan about helping kids with developmental disabilities. And it struck me, in a single devastating blow one day, that if I had a mental disability, I would most certainly lack the capacity to know that I had a mental disability. This realization felt like it cleared up a lot of mysteries for me. Eventually I gathered up the courage to ask my father about this concern of mine, insisting beforehand that he make a solemn promise not to laugh. He didn’t keep his promise. Years later, I was working as a freelance designer in New York City -- in the Analog Days, when you had to enlarge and reduce everything with photostats, when cutting and pasting actually involved blades and glue. To survive in this field, you needed relationships with photostat services, and the ones I used had developmentally disabled messengers running their packages to and from clients like me. One deadline was so tight I realized I had to walk the package to the photostat house myself, and wait for the resized artwork. It wasn’t until I was in the elevator, waiting for the door to close, that I realized all at once that I hadn’t slept in 48 hours, my hair was dirty and standing up in all the wrong places, I was still wearing the ill-fitting clothes that had become my uniform for working with rubber cement and wax, and that, in this particular context, my retro eyeglass frames had lost every bit of their hipster irony. When I was joined in the elevator by one of their messengers, I immediately saw that it was true: I had accidentally appropriated a whole set of fashion cues. I began to silently agonize over my oversight as the door closed. I could feel the messenger look me over me from head to toe. I stared at the elevator floor indicator, trying to look like a busy artist, the kind who’s got a tight deadline. The elevator finally started its creeping ascent. I couldn’t believe how slow we were moving. We were almost to the floor that the photostat lab was on. Then he spoke to me. “You know, if you want to play softball on Saturday, you have to sign up in Miss Helen’s office.” My childhood summers at Fiedel’s, the license-plate slogan, the checked-out kids, it all came rushing back, clouding my vision now, as the doors opened. I glanced over my shoulder at the messenger, blurting out -- much too loudly -- “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I made a bee-line for the customer counter, making a point to steer clear of the messengers’ pick-up area. As I discussed enlargement percentages and premium rush charges with the photostat technician, I had trouble focusing and I was a basket case by the time I arrived home with my re-sized artwork. Even my deadline would not prevent me from showering and changing my clothes. For years I hoped I might encounter that messenger again, and have some kind of healing interaction that could somehow make up for my elevator outburst. It never happened. But I think it’s not such a bad thing, growing up with artism. The way I see it, artism offered me honorary membership in a club I’d be honored to join, any day of the week. Especially Saturday (as long as I sign up in Miss Helen's office first). |
