A boy (and later a girl) named Fuchs.

Bullying seems to be on the news with increasing frequency over the last few years and looks like it is finally being taken seriously. But I don’t know how seriously to take it. I, like many, went through my share of awkward years on the playground. I took a fair share of harassment from older kids and, with some embarrassment, will admit to dealing out a considerable amount of my own. Still… I did well at sports and always had plenty of friends - but that didn’t always save me from the wide reaching targets of some of the older/bigger kids.

Whether it was my last name, my uncool bicycle, or the disproportionate size of my teeth - there was always something to be nitpicked if/when someone went looking. And I know how all the Disney movies and after school specials talk about how standing up to a bully will take away his/her power but, in my experience, there was rarely much more than a minor threat of physical danger. It was typically the words used that did most of the damage. The words didn’t stop hitting you even when everyone had gone their separate ways.

So now I’m left to wonder how to instruct Riley to behave now that she’s come home complaining that some of the older kids have made fun of her for supposedly having a boys name. I tried to tell her that if the kids on the playground are picking her first name to make fun of instead of the much more obvious and easy target of a last name like ‘Fuchs’ - then they aren’t necessarily the brightest bulbs in the fixture anyways. She didn’t understand what I meant (yet) and I didn’t feel like explaining it to her… She will find out soon enough.

I realize a little schoolyard razzing is nowhere near the same plane as the little boy on the news here who just recently committed suicide rather than facing his attackers/enduring more abuse… But it has been on my mind since she brought it up. I will do my best to keep instructing Riley in as many ways to resolve her conflicts as possible - in addition to showing her the appropriate applications of the ‘Louisville Slugger’ technique. And hopefully we can help her a little to navigate the treacherous waters of grade school bullying…

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The work front has been a little slower this week. I am trying to polish up designs for the catalogue I have been wanting to put together for over a year now. I’m also reworking and retouching some of the damages the summer shows inflicted on my paintings and such. I have a few people interested in showing my paintings now - but am also strongly considering another ‘inventory clearance sale’ like I have done a few times in the past. I really like the batch of paintings I have on hand but am also craving the feeling of a fresh start that selling them off would provide. Besides that… I wanna buy Cherie some plane tickets so she can be on a beach at some point this winter. It is as much a self-preservation technique as anything. Another long uninterrupted winter here and she might kill me!


Thanks for reading. Hope you’ve had a good week!

Rod

Humble beginnings...

13 years ago today would have been packing up and getting ready to head to our first bike rally in Fletcher, North Carolina. We had seen the last of our friends and family off after our wedding the prior Sunday and were ready to give the custom paint world our best shot.

I had one airbrush, a half pint of red, yellow, blue, black and white basecoats, some One Shot enamels, and a brand new canopy tent. We borrowed a van from Cherie’s Grandpa and set off.

The rally was huge and we were pretty well swamped from the get-go. And, being a primarily Goldwing rally, we were painting larger scale bike murals around the clock. Cherie would handle all the business and PR and I would sit and paint.

At about 4 in the morning on the Saturday night, I went to clear the fenders of a Goldwing trike I had just finished painting a Native American theme on. It was so humid and foggy that you couldn’t see all the way across the parking lot and I laid the clear coat down as if my touch-up gun was a garden hose. It ran and sagged and dripped and was just a horrible, horrible mess. We had to completely wipe it off; removing my murals in the process.

I started over and repainted the entire back end in about a third of the time - and it showed. When the customers showed up at 9 the next morning, they were not pleased with my efforts. Looking back, I really don’t blame them at all. After all, I had only been airbrushing for about 2 months and this was a full mural covering the entire back end of the trike that had been completed in about 3 hours… They did not want to pay the $150 we were charging (no - that’s not a typo… we charged $150 for a full mural job on a Goldwing.)

Cherie butted heads over it for a while but eventually sent them packing and I honestly don’t remember if they ended up paying or not. But what I do remember more than anything is how, in a moment of total exhaustion, frustration, and embarrassment; Cherie stood by and supported me. She comforted my bruised ego and gave me the required kick in the ass to get back to work on the other projects I had lined up and waiting. (I’ve included pictures below of one of the other trikes I painted at this rally.)

In fact, it was how she handled that incident and her conduct in general that lead to a spill over of customers from that rally to our next one a few weeks later. We were able to book people in advance and travel knowing that there was going to be work for us when we arrived.

We went on to travel and work bike rallies for the next three years covering the entire south-east of the United States. I couldn’t have done it without her - nor would I have wanted to. It was an ongoing adventure that I still look back fondly on.

Although I do have several other memories from our wedding week - this remains prominently among them. It has been 13 years now and I still rely on her for her unwavering support, encouragement and occasional kick in the ass. I’m pretty damned lucky…

Thanks for reading… Hope you’ve had a good week!

Rod

P.S.
In case you remember/as promised last week:

Hey, Teacher!...

If my extended family has a predominant profession - it’d undoubtedly be teaching. Beginning with both of my parents, I would wager that there are more doctors, deans, principals and instructors in my family than otherwise. So I do have a bit of an insiders window to the plight of teachers. They are often overworked, short staffed, underfunded and definitely underpaid. In fact, there was just a 100 million dollar cut to the public school budget here this fiscal year alone…

But it kinda pains me a little to say to say how disillusioned I am quickly becoming with the educational system now that my children are part of it.

My daughter, who is in grade 1, comes home with a standing order of 15 minutes required/supervised/logged daily reading, a weekly vocabulary project with it’s pertaining daily assignment, and any additional homework that may be assigned for that particular day. Did I mention she is in grade 1?! - and already averaging about 45 minutes of homework, requiring parental supervision, a day?

Once upon a time, especially before dual incomes were all but required to survive in society, this might have been far less of a concern. But I still can’t imagine EVER going home and saying: “Mom. Dad. It’s time to go over my Word Wall Words!” I’ve heard of and read articles talking about parental involvement being a key to success but I’m curious when that eclipsed instilling the sense of self-reliance, independence and personal accountability. And when a teacher says - “take this home to do with your parents” - I do wonder how much that blurs the lines of responsibility and then inevitably becomes the ‘cub scout wooden racecar’ approach to teaching/learning (where ultimately the parents just take over and do the work for the kids.)

I want so badly to be in the teacher’s corner here - but am really having trouble wrapping my head around this one. I’m doing my best to teach my kids all kinds of things already (while feeding, clothing, and sheltering them…) I kinda figured that I was going to be able to leave the schoolwork to the teachers.

Anyways… That’s two weeks in a row I’ve kinda gone off on a bit of a tangent. I’ll do my best to get back to fart and booby jokes for next week. Thanks for reading, though!

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With my parents in town over the weekend and needing to take 3 trips a day to the kids’ school - I haven’t gotten too much done on the workfront. We’ve just solved the childcare issue now, though, and I am looking down the scope at being to get nearly full days in again! I am pumped! Hopefully I can start getting into a pretty good/productive routine fairly soon… I just feel like I have so much cool stuff I NEED to get outta my head!!!! And can’t wait to hit the ground running.

Thanks again. Hope you’ve had a good week!

Rod

Holier than who?!

Religion has been on my mind again lately… This has been an area of struggle for me for some time now but this latest bout has been brought on partly due to enrolling the kids into a public school (in most of western Canada there are public and separate/Catholic school systems.) It has me wondering if I am denying my kids of a spiritual awareness of the so-called ‘bigger picture’ and/or moral bedrock.

I’m not completely sure what degree of my understanding of ‘right and wrong’ was fostered through religion and/or Catholic schooling. And if some of my experiences in Tennessee were any barometer for what a religious upbringing is capable of doing to a person; then I’m glad I missed the batshit crazy bus to rapture town.

In fact, the last discussion I’ve had with my children in regards to religion was explaining why there was a marked grave conspicuously just outside of the cemetery grounds in a little farm town in rural Saskatchewan (my Grandparents and 2 of my Uncles are buried there.) And why people would isolate, exclude and punish someone like that - in the name of religion. (They even went so far as to bury her North/South instead of the standard East/West… Sheesh!)

I don’t want to focus on the negative, though there is plenty to be found. On one hand, the clichéd “Stand for something or fall for anything” comes to mind - and I do worry that my waffling on this subject will be what’s eventually passed down.

In the meantime, I do try to set a good example, keep an open dialogue and encourage them to weed through the agendas and BS and discover their own beliefs. And if they do go down that road, I just hope they’ll find a path free of Kool-Aid and rattlesnakes!

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On the work front: I finished the bike parts in time to enjoy the long weekend and am trying to get a couple personal projects worked on now. The Chief skull may not be reinventing the wheel - but it gave me a chance to try a different approach. I started with pencil, inked in the darkest parts, airbrushed in the colors and shading, then scraped and erased my highlights. It actually is going pretty smoothly so far and I’m pretty pleased with the process and looking forward to applying it to my next project.

I’ve also been taking stock of all the paintings and such that I have on hand. It seems to be a bit of a shame that they are still all wrapped up and packed aside from my summer shows. So I am talking to some people to see if they’d be interested in displaying them for me. It’s pretty humbling asking people if they would be interested in showing my work… But I’d rather people were seeing them than let them continue to collect dust where they are now.

Thank you for reading!!! Hope you’ve had a good week.

Rod

I've been rubbed wrong.

Despite our efforts to be completely prepared for Riley’s first day of school, we neglected to purchase a ‘peanut free’ main course for her lunch. (in case you didn’t know it already/apparently peanuts are devil fodder and the war against them is being waged in our school systems.) Of course I didn’t realize this until I went to make her lunch this morning… 

Unlike pretty well every other morning or occasion, however, we had actually gotten up early enough to cater to the inevitable unplanned hiccups. I had plenty of time to run to the grocery store and pick her up a cleverly marketed, totally convenient in a pinch, and insanely overpriced package of ’Lunchables’.

The clerk at the store fell squarely into whatever the politically correct verbiage for 'dumb as post’ would be. She was slow, disconnected and totally indifferent to the fact that everyone in the Express Lane might actually be in a bit of a hurry. The only thing missing from the scenario was a wad of gum to serve as her cud.

I was sandwiched in the line between two other impatient parents presumably also picking up last minute items for their children. And the somewhat frazzled lady immediately behind me in line was letting out audible sighs of disgust with the clerks every inefficient move. She was also moving closer and closer to me as if that would somehow grease the wheels of our slow procession. After what seemed an eternity , though in reality probably only really a minute or so, the lady was close enough that if I moved in any way I would bump her (and vice versa.) My skin began to crawl because, as you know, it’s not often Claudia Schiffer or Elle Macpherson that invades your space… and this was the case here as well. My space had officially been invaded by a grumpy, frumpy, impatient and less clean than I would have preferred woman.

I had tried moving as far as I could away from her but refused to crowd the dude in front of me in the same manner. Flashing a few dirty looks had little effect on this wildebeest and only seemed to encourage the encroachment. It had just begun to cross my mind that I need to start bringing a portable pylon kit for just this sort of occasion when I felt it… (No - not that - that’s disgusting!) She was close enough that I could actually feel the warm exhalation of one of her heavy, exaggerated sighs up and down the back of my neck. It sent chills down my spine and forced me to turn and face the breath monster now standing a mere few inches from my face. I swallowed back my rising stomach and said; ‘excuse me?!’ and did the quick up and down eye movement thing that lets a person know that you are referring to them in their entirety as the problem.

She responded with a “hmmph” and shimmied herself back an obligatory three or four inches.

The next few minutes were spent awkwardly hoping the clerk would actually figure out how to scan a barcode in fewer than 26 attempts - and feeling the newly refocused, seething hatred of the heavy breathing bovine behind me. Ultimately, receiving the receipt from our transaction was like being awarded a get-out-of-jail-free card.

So… To get back on track here… It’s Riley’s first day of school today and she was very excited.

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Work has been dismal for me this week. Despite several running starts, I think this job may well be the least productive I have been in recent memory. I don’t know why - but it is taking FOREVER and the fact that my profit margin became non-existent several days ago is not helping with the lack of motivation. Ugh. I need to have it done for tomorrow, though, and better get to work.

Thanks for reading! Have a great long weekend!

Rod