Stories

Children I'm sure are encouraged to use their imaginations, come up with their own tales, or learn to re-tell stories told to them with the elements needed to make them worth remembering.

But has anyone ever written stories, used their imaginations to forget? To relieve the constant madness, oppression, or depression that was their childhood or adolescence?

I have.

I remember writing and drawing several storylines. All of them about struggle. Some of them about friendships and alliances, good and evil. And the ones I have written extensively...never seemed to have a conclusion. This frustrated me from time to time. Trying to think of a way to conclude a convoluted story.

I credit my brother for making such awesome drawings and comics when we were younger. He made it seem so easy. And friends at school loved the mess out of them. I also credit the consistent downs that seemed to suppress every fiber of my being, with almost no one to turn to outside of my siblings. I took to writing and creating comics and stories of my own.

Barbie and Mister Bear? A trashed never-ending  third-grade story about Barbie and Mr. Bear constantly battling back and forth over a...dollar? I think that was it. Neither was good, though I think Mr. Bear was the victim first, and I always made Barbie blond, skinny. And evil. And eventually witch-like. Mr. Bear was brown and large, and wore a suit with a hat. Man, I'm kind of glad that story got lost/tossed. There was no end to the evil things they did to eachother; tricked eachother, practically mutilated eachother. Barbie with her seductive charm and wickedness. Mr. Bear with his brute strength and anger. Both were smart, but even then I knew enough about gender differences to know which qualities could be despised.

The adventures of Deseure? A comic-book story that was made from recycled divorce papers while I was in the sixth grade. About me and aliens coming to destroy me, but no one believing me because it happened at night, or in the bathroom, or something else. But the aliens were always thwarted and destroyed, with the master alien sending in more strange looking beings to come after me. I think I was trying to convince people by the sixth issue that I wasn't making stuff up. But by then, in real life, dad made me throw them away! I put them neatly on top of the disgusting garbage in hopes to rescue them later, but when I tried to, it was too late. They were ruined and covered with more disgusting trash. My ability to create and imagine amidst turmoil was thwarted.

Then came the moment that stifled my dreams, yet made me more stubborn than ever. The moment I managed to buy Wizard Magazine's issue on comic-book colleges people should attend. This was in the eighth grade I believe. I remember hand-copying all of the colleges down. Even sending for information for the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I decided, thanks to this article, that I was going to be a comic book artist when I grew up.

To be continued