Takin' a Trip Back

So I make it a point not to share personal details about my life in this blog. This post, however, is going to be devoted to something that I don't feel too personal, but I think it'll give some of you an idea about who I really am and why I am the way I am.

I came home tonight from spending some time with my friends and discovered that my mom have found an old notebook from my Elementary School days. When I was in elementary school, we had these vending machine type things that you'd put two quarters into and it would give you these little notebooks. This is the one that my mom found for me tonight:

As you can see, I was very particular in how I wanted my notebooks to look. I also wanted it to be extremely easy for those around me to understand my notebooks, so, considering that, you can clearly see how many individual tire treads there are. Isn't that nice?

So, I'm going to come clean right now. This post is going to walk you through some of the drawings I found in this notebook. So, why don't we just jump right in?

As a small sidenote, I understand that some of the text may be difficult to read, so I'll do the honor of transcribing those for you. This one is a triceratops. I guess I drew these while I was going through a dinosaur phase (which, I'm pretty sure was 85% of my childhood.) He's clearly "a run away from t. rex". He's saying, "you. ha. rire." Yes. I think the meaning is evident. You can also see two disco balls and a...bomb. Or two grenades. Or two pineapples? You be the judge.

This time we have another dinosaur of sorts. It could be of the same family as a triceratops, but this one is hairy and has weird spines. It is also "run away from t. rex". There's nothing else dissimilar from the others, so we'll move on.

Woot. Change of pace. Now we have a very geometric helicopter...which also has a jet engine in the back. Best. Helicopter. Ever. I'm just going to say this now: it seems that keeping secrets wasn't really my forte when I was young. Clearly, the box this helicopter is carrying is labeled "top secret," but someone did the good pleasure of labeling what is "in side box." How rude.

Now we have a somewhat similar helicopter carrying another box labeled "top seceret." This one was more secret because it had an extra 'e'. Once again we have that same jerk telling everyone what was inside the box. We have an allosause, which is probably related to applesauce. This time the divulger of secrets was also careful to tell you which box the allosause is in just to clear any confusion which may have come from 

previous drawings.

This time we have a trick in the box. I have to warn you not to open it because it may be a trick, but it also might be a trap.

This is my personal favorite. We have a man-like being, possible something out of one of the Mario Brothers games, but with a rake for an arm. He's saying "Rooooooooorrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmbbbbbbbbbddddddddddddddduuule" followed closely by "I don't now wat I am saing" (translated, I don't know what I am saying.) This reminds me most of myself these days. A series of unintelligible noises quickly followed by a disclaimer. Good work, 10-year-old me.

More helicopters. But this time, the artist got wise to the stuff the other jerk was doing. The artist wasn't about to let the other person divulge what was in the box, so he beat him to the punch. Top seceret (Gun's) possessive. Figure that one out. It's like "hey, this box is very top secret (by the way, it has guns in it ." For you grammar nuts, I intentionally included the wink inside the quotes because he was quoting someone else's action of winking. Don't think that makes sense? Well, grow up.

We'll conclude with this. Guns. Every man child's goal: be good at drawing guns. But, I decided to take it a step further: why only draw awesome guns? Why not get down the grenades, bombs, and explosions at the same time? Plus, a lot of people can draw guns, but I can draw a Nerf gun (top right. It says Nerf, if you can't see it.) What's more intimidating to evil-doers than a Nerf gun? That's what I thought.

So, these are the types of things I imaged as a child. If you're a little bit scared, then you're probably on the right track. Hope it's been an enjoyable look in the psyche of my youth.