Until the second term of grade three, I was a respectable
student. Then for some unknown reason my academic standing
dropped off suddenly. I’m not sure what brought on the decline, wether at some level I was upset about events in my family or maybe I was over reacting to John F.Kennedy’s blockade of Cuba.
My family was furious. I was a disgrace. My sister, particularly,
did not like the idea of a moron in the family, so my father
commissioned her at the rate of five cents an hour to tutor me in
the basement. Fortunately, my sister was not only very bright –
she was short of funds. She tutored me each night from 6 to 8pm in the furnace room.
While an exemplary teacher, at times she was so strict, I considered climbing into the boiler.
My marks improved that year but I never regained my academic legs fully. At university I finished a B.A. in English Literature. It took me six years to complete and seven to recover. I finally graduated ‘Summa Cum Late’.
My self esteem was so low when I left university, when I opened my graduation portrait there was no one there. Unable to decide whether to return to Toronto or go out west to work temporarily as a waiter, I went West but got off the train at
every stop trying to decide wether to head west or stay east. The first stop was Orillia, Ontario where I slept under a billboard. When I called a close friend from a pay phone he advised me not to worry about staying east or going west as both choices were equally meaningless.
Later I went on to draw Cartoons and write a humour column which started in Orillia and spread to nine other papers, including many columns that appeared in
The Toronto Star.
After running 1,800 shows and lessons I wrote a book on Cartooning, and performed comedy for a wide variety of groups from Loblaw's to Spar Aerospace, to CBC National Radio Syndication.
But, back in grade three I had felt like an aberration – a blight on my grade three class average. Looking back, I now realize I was a fungus of sorts. The only thing that saved me was a burning desire to gain approval by trying to make people laugh - sometimes in the form of cartoons. Humour and Cartooning became a door through which I was lucky enough to escape.
My hope is that these Cartooning events and my book, The Computer’s Down. The Cable’s Out. Let’s Draw Cartoons, will open a similar door for young people. In them they will find a simple step-by-step, open ended, approach to drawing cartoons. Included are suggestions on how to see, appreciate and use the humour in their own lives.
They’ll learn how to take problems from life and transform them into their own cartoon stories.
Included as well is the message: “Talent is luck – what counts is courage, practise and persistence”.
You don’t need great artistic talent to use cartooning as a tool to transform your own world. You simply need to be able to see humour in your life. And if you are not afraid of mistakes, willing to practise and to believe in your own ideas - you will always have your own private door to escape.