It goes like this. Someone asks me where I work or what I do. I say I am an artist and that I teach art. Right then and there, unsolicited, a very closely held story of their personal artistic wreckage emerges. I see it coming. I listen.
They tell me their verdict to never draw again is final.
The type of person who tells this story is boundless. A professional woman in the boarding line for an airplane, a nurse practictioner extracting my stitches, a beginning student who confesses she is ready to bolt from the classroom the first time she is asked to create something.
The truth is, they were originally going somewhere. They were on a path to drawing, then they were interrupted.