On the last golden day of Fall, I had dinner on April’s porch with my sister and her husband, Clay.
Did you know that all three of us started out in various forms of art degrees at KU? April was an industrial arts major, Clay was an architect major, and I was a graphic design major.
Please stop laughing April. Please stop! You know I wanted to be a fashion designer! Which is why it makes perfect sense that I chose to go to KU… a college that has absolutely no fashion design degree of any kind!
I remember very well, trying to explain this to my father as my parents were driving me to KU to drop me off for the start of my Freshman year.
And dad looked at me JUST LIKE THAT APRIL!!!
Strangely, this is not a post about me, or about wine, or about fashion design…
It is a post about nude models.
You see, all three of us were required to take a “life drawing class” for our various degrees. Even though none of us ever got those degrees… except Clay… he did become an architect…
“Life Drawing” was in fact how April and Clay met. But I will let April tell you that story. Today we will only speak of the nudes.
Clay will go first.
In Clay’s first “life drawing class” he focused his entire drawing on the man’s wrist and of course the watch… which the model still had on. He drew the hand and the wrist and the arm and the watch in great detail.
Then the teacher stepped up behind Clay and examined his work….
And he told Clay that he needed to draw the entire body.
April recounted the delightful time that there was a ball of fuzz trapped in the model’s uh… the model’s uh… the uh… model’s body…
This made it very difficult for her to focus on anything except the ball of fuzz.
And me… well I was not in the same class with April and Clay. I was alone. I was a freshman from a small town and had no idea that someone was going to walk into my classroom and take off all their clothes.
I wanted to run out of the
class room. I wanted to hide inside of my drawing tablet. I wanted to melt into the floor and never be heard from or seen again. I was so embarrassed!
I may have gasped a few times. I may have coughed or made some unusual snorting sounds. But I did not laugh. I held that laugh for THREE SOLID HOURS. I literally thought I was going to die from NOT LAUGHING, but I did not laugh.
By the time the class was over, I was exhausted from holding myself in check for the entire class. I climbed up the hill to my dorm full of a great story for my roommates. The girls all gathered around as I recounted every moment of my struggle. And then we laughed. We laughed until tears formed a lake beneath our feet and we almost drowned. And I was greatly relieved.
I quickly grew accustomed to nude models… and shortly thereafter, they became nondescript… and then I hardly realized a nude person was standing in front of me… and then I started nodding off in class whenever there was a nude model.
I believe this is called growth.
The end.
