There was almost — and I don’t mean this in a negative way at all. There was probably almost no encouragement, but it was more like that was how our parents were in the seventies. They were busy. They were doing their own things, and we were left to our own devices. And so it was just a very private thing that I did. I had friends. My peers were much more excited about what I was drawing than my parents or — I mean my parents would say oh, that’s nice, that’s lovely, you know.
I mean my mother kept none of my drawings except for maybe five. I mean so it really wasn’t that big of a deal. It was just something. But my friends got excited about it, and it was something that I could do better than they could, and I needed that. I needed — you know, I couldn’t hear like they could, but I could draw better than they could.
And so I mean that was a real validation for me that they responded positively to it. So I think that acceptance was more important than — I wasn’t trying to get any checks from my parents or even from teachers. That didn’t matter, but it did matter that my friends thought it was cool that I could draw.
