Bill

When I was a kid I did a lot of stupid, crazy, and shitty things.  I'm not talking about when I was a teen but rather when I was pretty small; between the ages of 6-10.  A lot of the times I was fully aware of what I was doing and didn't really care about the consequences. Other times I thought I understood what I was doing but I really didn't comprehend the full burden I was putting on my parents.

This story describes an event that falls in the later category.

When I was about seven or eight my best friend (I'm hiding his name intentionally) and I were home alone and we were looking for something fun to do.  We went into my garage and, within, we found some cans of black, blue, and red spray paint.  It didn't take us long to decide these cans would provide us with hours of fun.  We started off spraying a few spots here and there in the garage; on my dad's workbench or on the inner wall.  Shortly afterwards we expanded our canvas to include the exterior wall of the garage.  We had, prior to that day, a white garage with black trim.  Once my friend and I were done we had a far more colorful garage thanks to the many dark splotches of spray paint we left everywhere we could reach.

Neither of us really understood one critical component about spray paint - you don't want to have the nozzle too close to the surface.  We held the cans close and push the buttons hard which resulted in thick pools of paint forming on the wall each pool trailing a tail to the ground as the pain and gravity intermingled.

After briefly admiring our handiwork on the garage we moseyed into the driveway where my dad had two blue pickup trucks.  At least one had a camper top on it.  In short order they had matching paint schemes with the garage.  Just as quickly we turned around and gave the same treatment to the side of my house.  It was as if we had moved into a world where everything would pass for a skittles wrapper.  There were blue, red, and black dots everywhere we could reach.

Amazingly we still had paint left and my friend lived right next door.  His house was a red brick that was just begging for a little sprucing up.  We ran over to his house and repeated the process.  Dot dot dot dot dot dot dot.. Everywhere we could.  We probably laughed about it until we ran out of paint.

Then we tossed out the paint cans and went about our merry way thinking nothing of the destruction we had left behind.

I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall the night after the painting; listening to my parents discuss what they were going to do with me.  Hopefully the absurdity of it brought them a few laughs.

Every once in  while this story pops into conversation with one of my parents and we chuckle looking back on it.  I know it caused them both a lot of inconvenience - they did have to repaint the entire house and garage.  I'm not sure what my dad did about the trucks.

Today I found a story about another kid causing his parents a lot of pain and it reminded me of the painting day. In this story a four year old used his fathers passport as a coloring book which has left the boy and his father stuck in South Korea.  I think my polka dots were better art - but I did have about four years of extra practice.

#childhood #spray-paint #paint #graffiti #biography