I work a lot. I drive the bus 50 hours a week and when I’m not doing that I'm spending about 10 hours a week doing stuff that has to do with driving the bus (you would be surprised I think)
When I am not doing the job that my country has deemed I am best suited for, (basically a brick tied to a string with a brain in a jar attached) I am in my studio trying to prove to my country that I am worth more than the bus driver thing.
“See world, I can do other things!”
“Well Chris if you don't like your job maybe you should quit.”
said my old therapist.
“Thanks doc, I'm cured.”
Anyway.
As much as I work my various jobs, I still get time to do bedtime with the kids on Friday. Im pretty much a shell by 10:00pm but its important to have that time with them, they know that and I know it.
I say I'm a shell because I get up at 4am almost every day so that I can scratch out a pittance of time that will one day lead me being the greatest artist who ever lived.
“I’ve never known anyone who got up at 4 o'clock in the morning and didnt make something of themselves.” said Joseph Gallavin host of KBOO’s Art Focus.
We’ll see Joe.
I'm so tired on Friday that sometimes I'm just laying on the floor with the kids standing over me like interrogators talking in German accents, “You vill tell us a story daddy!”
“Ya daddy, and make it poopy!”
All I can do is roll around on the floor and go, “I cant. I'm too tired. Wah”
But I do most of the time. Oh by the way, making a story poopy is when you just add a lot of diarrhea and feces to a story.
So I decided to write them an actual story so that on the Friday Nights that I am too zonked to come up with such high brow material as “Cinderella slipped in some poop as she stepped out of the carriage and she fell down and rolled all around in it. and the poop was every where.” I could just whip this sucker out and knock their socks off.
So I did…and I did.
It’s based on a Twisted Tales Comic from 1986 called “Me an Ol’ Rex”
Parental Advisory: This story is not suitable for your children.
Don’t worry, its not poopy.
REX
There once was a boy named Ricky who loved to draw dinosaurs. His favorite dinosaur was tyrannosaurus rex, the king of the dinosaurs.
The only family that Ricky had was his mother. Who he loved very much. Ricky never knew his father, he left when Ricky was very young.
Ricky's mother loved to watch him draw. They were very poor and never had money for movies or video games or iPads so Ricky would spend long hours entertaining himself by drawing made-up dinosaurs and telling his mother about their powers. “You are so creative Ricky.” she would say, “you have a very good imagination!”
Then one sad grey day Ricky's mother died and Ricky was forced to go live with his grandfather. Not the father of his mother but his father's father, a man he had never heard of!
His name was Mr. Anderson and he was wicked and sinister. On their first meeting, the old man looked down at the little boy like he was nothing more than a bug he could squash beneath his muddy boot. “You will not call me Grandfather. You will not call me Papa. You will not call me Grampie or Puppa or Pip Pap or Kipper. You will call me Mr. Anderson and I will call you “boy” until such time that you have proven to be a man. Only then will I call you by name. Do you understand boy?”
Ricky clutched his drawing book tightly to his chest, and said," yes sir… er, I mean Mr. Anderson.”
The old man took the book from Ricky, “What is this?” He flipped through the pages with disgust and scoffed. “Won't be having time for nonsense I’m afraid, far too much work to be done around here.” He threw the book into the trash.
For the first year that Ricky lived with the old man he worked from the moment he woke up until he went to bed at night. The old made Ricky sleep in the barn and the only food Ricky got was some lumpy porridge in the morning, the heels of bread in the afternoon and for dinner a few scraps of meat on top of pale watery cabbage, which was the only thing that would grow on the farm.
If Ricky complained, the old man would beat him. If Ricky dropped an egg, the old man would beat him. Late for supper, a beating, early for supper, a beating. Looking the old man in the eye, that was a beating too. If he was late waking up, if he was too slow doing a task or if he didn't do chore correctly, it seemed like the old man always had a reason. A beating was the punishment for even the slightest offense.
One day a woman named Diane from child services came to check on Ricky. The old man knew she was coming and combed his hair and wore a mustard colored suit and a purple tie, all of it mouth eaten and thread bare. Mr. Anderson talked so sweetly to Ricky he thought the old man had lost his mind.
“Oh I get it,” Ricky thought to himself, “He's only being nice so that this lady will think he's a good grandfather and will leave us alone. “
Everything was going right and the lady seemed satisfied with “this situation” right until she asked Ricky how he liked school. When Ricky said he didn't go to school, the old man gave Ricky a look that chilled him to the bones.
“Teaching a boy the ways of the farm is important Mr. Anderson but the state requires all children to receive a minimum of a 4th grade education. I'm afraid the boy must be enrolled.”
As soon as Diane the lady from child services was out of sight The Old Man gave Ricky a beating so severe he thought he might kill him right there then.
In the end the old man did allow Ricky to attend school, he had no choice. “But, you are to be home by 4 everyday to finish your chores. If you're late…’
“Yes Mr. Anderson.” Ricky acknowledged.
School for Ricky was not much better than the farm. First, he had to be up at three in the morning to start his chores, then by dawn, he had to set off for school on a three mile walk!
Between the farm and the school was a massive junk yard. If Ricky went around, he would add another half mile to his trip, so he was forced to sneak through the stripped cars, old buses, tractors, broken glass, rotten lumber and everything else the people of the county didn't want.
Now in this junkyard roamed a pack of vicious dogs of a variety of sizes and breeds. On their own the dogs did not pay Ricky much attention, but if they were together they would chase Ricky. Ricky knew if they ever got ahold of him they would tear him from limb to limb. Every morning was a nightmarish run for poor Rickys young life.
The journey to school was just the start of his problems though. On his first day of school, Ricky met Pearly McCalerster who, it was said, had stayed back so many times that he was suppose to be in high school by now! Pearly towered over all of the other children. He was so big in fact he needed his own special desk. The first day of school Ricky mistakenly confused Pearly as a teacher and asked “Mr. McCalaster may I go to the bathroom?”
The whole class erupted and laughter, but not Pearly. He ground his teeth and his giant hands became fists. His face grew a deep purple. Everyday since then Pearly never missed an opportunity to kick, punch, pinch or shove Ricky. Still, it was nothing compared to what he got at home.
The teachers weren't much better. There was one teacher in particular that seemed to dislike Ricky even more than Pearly. Her name was Mrs. Lincoln who seemed to hate Ricky more than Pearly. Ricky didn't really understand why but it seemed to have something to do with his last name. The first thing Mrs. Lincoln ever said to Ricky was, “Anderson? You are Abe Anderson's grandson.”
“Yes mame.”
She scoffed and made a note next to his name, “Why don't you come sit down in front next to me Mr. Anderson, I have a feeling I am going to need to keep an eye on you “
When Pearly would beat Rickey up, Mrs. Lincoln would blame Ricky for fighting. If he tried to explain that he didn’t do it, she would give him detention and Pearly would laugh.
Detention was practically a death sentence because it meant that he would have to stay after school and would be late doing his chores. The old man would be waiting for him when he got home more mad than Pearly ever could be.
Sometimes he wished Diane, the lady from child services would have just forgotten about him. Then he would have just had to deal with the old man and none of these other complications.
Most nights Ricky would go to bed with a lot of hatred in his heart. He hated the world. He hated his mom for dying. He hated God for allowing this to happen. He hated the dogs that would chase him. He hated Pearly. He hated the teachers but most of all he hated Mr. Anderson.
“Maybe he’ll die soon.’ was his last thought before drifting off to sleep. Then Diane the lady from child services would have to let him stay on the farm.
One morning, when Ricky went to the hen house to get the eggs for the old man he found something peculiar. As he lifted up each chicken to take away an egg he discovered one that was unlike any egg he had ever seen. It was about the size of a grapefruit, bluish in color with purple and white dots. He held the egg in his hands and marveled at it. It was warm and alive. Where did it come from? Surely a chicken couldn't have laid it.
Ricky brought the eggs to the old man and showed the big one to the old man.
“What are you getting on about? That's just a regular old chicken egg you stupid idiot. There's nothing special about it.” He told Ricky to stop wasting his time or he was going to beat him again.
Ricky did not mention the egg again and made breakfast for the old man. He left the big egg alone and put it in a basket and set it on the counter
As the sun rose Ricky began the long walk of going to school. As he walked by the farm house he heard a great commotion coming from the kitchen. He slowly crept over to the kitchen window and could hear plates crashing and breaking on the floor and the squealing of chairs being pushed around. Ricky leaned his walking stick against the house and looked inside. Pieces of the big egg were strewn all over the counter. A chair had been knocked over and standing on the kitchen table was a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex with blue skin and purple dots! The old man was nowhere to be seen but Ricky instantly thought of the beating he would take when the old man discovered the kitchen in such a state.
Ricky rushed in and tried to grab the hatchling, it was vicious and snapped at Ricky when he tried to get close to it. Fearing that the tyrannosaurus rex would hurt the old man Ricky ran to the barn and got a tank of CO2 and brought it back to the window. He turned on the tank and started pumping CO2 into the house. Knocking the dinosaur hatchling out cold.
Ricky dragged the baby dinosaur out of the house. Man! He was a lot heavier than he looked, and he smelled like the old man too for some weird reason. Ricky dragged the dinosaur into the barn and chained it to an old tractor. He cleaned up the kitchen as best as he could and ran to school faster than he ever had before. He was still a half hour late. The principal sat him down in his office.
“Ricky you are a bright young man and you have a great imagination. If you apply yourself I have no doubt that you will leave this small town and become something great. Now don't be late again or we will have to get your grandfather involved.” The mention his grandfather made Ricky's blood ran cold. He assured the principal that it would not happen again
Ricky came home expecting that he was going to get beat again for the state of the kitchen,but when he walked into the house he discovered the old man was nowhere to be seen. The kitchen was still messy from his slap dash effort to pick it up before running out this morning, but it would seem like no one had even been in here. As he picked up the bits of dinosaur egg shell he saw a folded note on the kitchen table. He opened it, there was a message in a handwriting that was very much like his own.
The note read:
“Dear grandson, I have gone to the city. Please continue your chores as normal and continue going to school. I do not know when I shall return. Signed,
your grandfather."
“What?” Ricky thought. The old man was frail and had never left the county line. The City? It didn't make any sence. What could he be doing in the city? Was this a trick? Perhaps he was lurking in the dark somewhere waiting to see if Ricky would slack off on his chores or eat the good food out of the pantry. Ricky suddenly remembered the dinosaur.
He ran to the barn to find the baby dinosaur curled up and sleeping next to the tractor. He was not much bigger than a dog, but when the light poured into the dark barn, the t Rex launched at Ricky snarling and snapping at him. The chain pulled tight over and over again as the beast lunged at the boy. Ricky stood transfixed by the reptile. How could this be possible? Where did the egg come from? He approached it getting as close as he could without coming in range of the beast. It's teeth gnashed, its little claws swung up and down uselessly. It's tail lashed and the chain snapped tight every time the dino would lunge at Ricky. Saliva flew all over the place, it's glistening purple tongue lolled out of its mouth, its eyes huge and red, with wide black pupils taking in every inch of the world around it.
“Golly jee!” He said to noone “he means to eat me!” Ricky turned around and ran out of the barn. He went into the kitchen and started putting any food he could find in a basket. He briefly thought of the old man and the beating he would get when the old man found out that he had been in the pantry, getting at the food that Ricky wasn't aloud to eat. “By the time that old fart comes back, Rex will be so big, the old man won't dare to hurt me.” Ricky thought to himself, then suddenly realized his pet now had a name.
Ricky brought Rex sandwiches, eggs, potatos, raw chicken, Cheerios, Oreos and Spaghetti Os. He brought him frozen fish and thawed ice cream. He gave him deli meat and Mac and cheese. All the food Ricky was never allowed to eat. But Rex refused it all. It seemed all he wanted to do was snap and snarl and bite and roar at Ricky. “Well you can't eat me.” Ricky said in frustration and went off to sleep in his corner of the barn
Over the next few months, Ricky went back and forth from school and although school remained the same, he found that life on the farm had become increasingly pleasant since the old man had left. Ricky continued to do his chores and to his amazement he had actually improved some of the produce on the farm. Now not just watery cabbages were growing but soon onions, carrots and even potatoes were too!
But one thing still vexed Ricky, his dinosaur would not eat. The dinosaur would just snarl and yell every time he came close.
One day something interesting started happening.
Instead of showing aggression, every time Ricky would enter the barn Rex started being a little bit more calm. He had taken on this sort of blank stare and started making this clicking sound. ‘Click-click-click- click click”. What on Earth could this mean? Ricky thought “I don't know anything about raising a dinosaur. “
Over time it was beginning to show that Rex was not doing well. He had grown gaunt, skinny and lethargic. He even started to allow Ricky to pet him.
“I’ll figure something out boy, don‘t you worry.”
He went to the chicken coop and grabbed a chicken, broke its neck and through it at Rex. The dinosaur sniffed the chicken a little bit and curled up and went to sleep. Ricky did the same.
Early the next morning the chickens began to walk out the coop. It just so happened that Ricky forgot to shut the gate the night before and as soon as the sun came up they began to cluck, cluck, cluck all over the yard. Now there was a bunch of food in the barn, scattered all over the place, this was the food that Rex had refused to eat. So as Ricky slept the chickens poked and scratched their way into the barn getting closer and closer to Ricky and the sleeping dinosaur.
Ricky suddenly awoke to horrible squaks and soon after a horrible crunching sound. He sprang out up fearing the old man had returned, but instead he saw a cloud of feathers and gushes of blood as Rex devoured the chicken in the air! Ricky jumped for joy as he watched his pet eat the chicken in one, two, three bites! Rex then turned in a circle, laid down and made that “Click-click-click” sound as he went to sleep.
Ricky looked at Rex with a blank stare, he looked at all the rotten food on the floor of the barn, the cookies, the old meat, the pasta, the sandwiches. Why didn't Rex want any of those things? and then, it came to him…
“Living things!” Ricky yelled, “You want fresh meat!”
Act II
By Christmas the old man still had not come home and Rex weighed 200 pounds. But there was a problem, all the animals on the farm were gone. Ricky had fed every animal on the farm to Rex. All the chickens, the goats the cow and even Mr. Filibuster the Donkey. Watching the dinosaur eat the donkey alive was hard, Ricky had liked the old donkey, but there was nothing he could do. There were probably over a thousand donkeys in the world, there was only one Tyranosaurus…well, alive anyway.
Rex chewed on bones as his stomach growled, Ricky approached him to give him a pat and the dinosaur snapped at the young boy.
Ricky jumped out of the way barely escaping the dino's massive jaws.
“You're hungry.” Ricky said “but we're all out of animals.”
Ricky curled up on his side of the barn and fell asleep thinking of where we could find fresh meat for Rex. In the corner of the barn, Rex made his soothing sounds,
“Click-Click-Click.”
The next day Ricky went to school. As he was navigating the junkyard the pack of dogs appeared on top of a pile of refrigerators and looked down at him. First only two appeared then four then 12. Had there always been so many? Ricky started looking for his best escape route, there was a path that led to school and a path that led back…home. Wait a minute!
Ricky started running back to the farm, the pack of junkyard dogs close on his heels. Ricky ran those stupid mutts into the barn. He ran past Rex, dodged a snap from him just as the dogs came in. It was dark and by the time their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, Ricky had gotten behind them and shut and locked the barn door from the outside. The sounds of dogs yelping and Rexes roars could be heard for miles.
Rex began to get bigger. He began to fill out and he began to become more tame. He no longer snapped and roared and scratched at Ricky when he came into the barn but instead stared off into the distance and made that click-click-click sound. Ricky became convinced that this must be the sound that a young dinosaur makes to his mother. Or perhaps when he's happy.
As Ricky's life on the farm became better and the crops he was growing began to flourish. Ricky’s self-esteem also got better. He became more sure of himself. One morning Pearly gave Ricky a particularly severe thrashing for no reason at all, and then, in typical fashion, Mrs. Lincoln gave Ricky detention. But at then she did something that was not typical, she gave Pearly detention too! Oh NO!
“My dad is gunna take my hide for this you little freak!” Pearly whispered to Ricky. “After Detention you are dead!”
By the time detention was over it was dark, Mrs. Lincoln looked up from her desk. “You boys may go now.”
As Ricky walked by Mrs. Lincolns desk she looked up at him, “Oh and Ricky…” she gave a smirk to Pearly, “Good luck.”
Ricky had never run so fast in his life. Pearly was no slouch either, Peary could RUN!
“I'M GUNNA GET YOU RICKY!”
As Ricky ran he thought about getting to the junkyard. Pearly would never be able to find him there, especially at night, but then what? Pearly would just be waiting for him at school the next day, no. This had to end, this was going to end. And it was going to end tonight.
Pearly saw Ricky run into the barn. Pearly was exhausted, but he knew the best part was sure to come, he walked slowly to the barn whistling a happy little tune.
As he opened the barn door he sang
“Yoooooo WHooooo. Ricky you little freak, Im here to smash your face in!”
The barn was all dark. There was a bad smell and stuff all over the floor. Pearly kicked something and went thudding across the floor. Then the sound of a great chain being dragged across the floor.
“Who's there!” Pearly said, the fear in his voice unmistakeable. “Dont come any closer, I…I have a knife.” Pearly pulled out his fathers switchblade and it made its unmistakable sound. “shnnk.”
Ricky's voice was suddenly heard high above Pearly, “Your going to need more than a knife Pearly.”
Rex roared.
Pearly screamed.
Ricky hadn't been this happy since his mother was alive. The farm was flourishing. Rex was growing and even the teachers and students at school seemed to be liking Ricky. All except that one Mrs. Lincoln who still for some reason had it out for him. One day during recess Ricky accidentally hurt one of his classmates and despite the boy saying it was just an accident, Mrs. Lincoln came down hard on Ricky.
"I think it's about time I had a meeting with your father.”
“Grandfather.” Ricky corrected and he's away on business right now.
She grabbed Ricky by the ear and twisted as hard as she could, “Don't you correct me young man!” Mrs. Lincoln snarled.
“You tell him that I'll be coming over to see him in 2 days time. We'll see what he has to say about all your back talk.”
Two days later Mrs. Lincoln showed up in her giant car. A brown buick with white fur interior and a vanity licence plate that read SASSY.
She got out of the car but looked different. She had a fox fur coat on, big earrings, a big fat pearl necklace and lots of make up.
“I'm here to see Mr. Anderson.” she said
Ricky looked at her.
“He's here in the barn.”
Mrs Lincoln went into the barn.
Mrs. Lincoln never came out.
By summer Rex was full grown. He towered over Ricky.
Ricky lay at Rex feet in the barn.
“You know old chum, I don’t think I'll go back to school next year. “ I think it's the farmer's life for us!”
Maybe I'll even think about getting you a longer chain and letting you go outside? Would you like that ol pal? Would ya?”
Rex looked down at Ricky.”
“Click-Click-Click”
“Click-Click-Click”
Act III
Suddenly Rex looked towards the barn door and began to growl. Moments later Ricky heard the car driving up the driveway.
“It's him!” Ricky bellowed out in terror
“Oh my god he's back. When he sees I've eaten all the food, when he sees I’ve killed all the animals”
Ricky began to pace back and forth and chew on his knuckles.
“Maybe he won't beat me this time. Maybe he'll see how good I did with the farm. All the new crops.”
“No.” Ricky said to himself
“I won't go back to the way it was. If he lays a hand on me, I'll just sick Rex on him. That'll show him. Maybe Rex won't even have to eat him neither. Maybe Rex can just growl at him. Yeah, Rex will protect me.”
Rex continued to growl as Ricky heard the car shut off and the car door opened. Then a voice was heard but it was not the voice of the old man. It was the voice of a woman
“Hello? Ricky? Mr. Anderson? Is anyone home? It's Diane from child services. I'm here to do my follow-up?”
Ricky froze. He put his hand on Rex's head and told him to be quiet. This was even worse. Once the lady from child services realized that Ricky had been living by himself for almost an entire year, they would surely put him in the orphanage. Better to just stay quiet and hopefully she'll go away.
But she did not go away. They heard the barn door slowly open. Light came pouring in. Flys erupted from the rotten meat and bones that lay strewn all over the floor. Dianes eyes adjusted as she took in the horror. Not just the bones of animals, but larger bones too, and clothing. a fox fur coat, a boot, she stepped in closer and her foot kicked an open switch blade and sent it spinning across the floor.
“Hello.” said Ricky
“Oh my God.” Diane, the lady from child services said under her breath.
“Don't be scared,” said Ricky. “He's quite tame and completely under my control.”
Diane froze in place, “What has happened here.”
“It took me a while to figure out what he liked. He was really grumpy and mean at first but after I figured out his food, he started to grow real big and now he'll do whatever I say. He hardly ever snaps at me now. I think he's a T-Rex a theropod to be sure.”
“Theropod?” Diane, the lady from child services said
“Yeah.” said Ricky “a dinosaur that stands on two legs instead of four.”
Ricky’s dinosaur stood up revealing himself to Diane the lady from child services. He towered over Ricky.
the lady swallowed and said,
“Can you hear me Mr. Anderson?”
Ricky looked confused. Why was Diane the lady from child services talking like that to Rex?
“I'm afraid he can't understand you.” said Ricky, “dinosaurs only have a brain the size of a walnut.”
“Ricky,” Diane said “that's not a dinosaur… that's your grandfather.”
Ricky looked up where his pet dinosaur stood. The chain that Ricky had attached to his grandfather's leg a year ago had bit harshly into his ankle and it was all red and infected around it. His grandfather looked down at him on top of a pile of bones, and rotting meat. Ricky's grandfather stared at him with a blank expression on his face and said “click-click-click.”
Ricky's eyes widened in surprise and then a big smile came over his face,
“Well would ya look at that! I suppose he is my grandfather.”
Ricky looked over at Diane, the lady from child services with a big smile on his face and said
“Well it’s like my mom always said, “I have a really good imagination.”
The Gifted and Talented Series
I had a dream that I had to drive to Madison
To deliver a painting for some silly reason.
-Kimya Dawson, Tire Swing
Concerning how I make art:
1: If I don't make art I become despondent.
2: I am motivated by making art for people I know.
In 2018 I presented a show of work from my comic, Flight. The show consisted of 30 pages in water color and ink along with the cover, a gaudy and audacious golden framed 18” x 28”painting of a cycloptian angel that acted as a center piece for the show. A dozen “conceptual satellite pieces” that did not actually appear in the comic were scattered around the main piece and each page of the comic stretched out in both directions surrounding the gallery.
The show had a small turn out and sales were few. I sold mostly comics and at the end of the night I had almost 2 thousand dollars worth of framed art still hanging on the wall. The forty plus framed pieces took up most of the wall space of our home for a while but eventually I resigned to my studio closet.
For the next few years, I slowly gifted these paintings in exchange for services, brakes for my car, birthday presents, even a little MDMA (not as fun as I remembered). The center piece hung over both our children's crib acting as a weird eldridge protector, but eventually, as so often happens when an artist hangs their own work in their home, all I could see in it were the mistakes and I pleaded with my brother in law to take it off my hands. I promised to help him hang it, I’m sure I’ll get around to it one day.
Eventually I had given all the concept paintings away and all that was left was the framed comic book pages. Comic book pages are hard to sell, they are out of context by themselves and are not terribly engaging. Unless the buyer is a super fan of the artist or comics in general most people are not going to get much out of hanging a comic book page on their wall.
After almost a decade of getting knocked around and chipped and cursed at I decided to do something about them. I couldent just give them to Goodwill, but the thought of giving them to friends felt like I was just going to be burdening them. “Oh great, another piece of art from that comic you made once…you spoil me.”
I wanted to honor the time and money I had put into these pieces without it feeling like I was just unloading my junk onto people.
I would give the pages away to people that have never received a copy of Flight from me, but who had shown interest in my art. I figured if I gave the work to people who liked my work, then, after I left the recipient's house, they wouldn’t have to look at their spouse with a pained expression and ask, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
I wrote down names of co-workers who had seen me drawing at work, I wrote down customers I remembered talking to about making comics and painting, I wrote down anyone I had ever backed into a corner at a party to tell about some story idea I had. It was difficult to find someone who I thought might be interested in these pieces but hadn't gotten one already. I am a pretty insecure artist at times and crave validation, a trait that I simultaneously accept and loathe about myself. So if anyone has expressed interest in my work most likely they have already received a litany of stickers, prints or zines.
Eventually I had my list, the next challenge was formalizing the exchange of these works in a way that honored the years of work that I had put into them. I didn't want to just grab someone and say, “Hey I've got this painting in my car for you here you go bye bye.” The work deserved a ritual and the recipient deserved an explanation. Framed original art, whether you made it or not, deserves to be honored. The act of exchanging art can be a wonderful experience.
Having an artist shows up to my house with a piece of art they created and I get to open it up, ask them questions, hear their struggles, this fills me up in a way I can barely describe. No matter what your skill, no matter what your age, when you have chosen me to give this to and you tell me that this is important enough to keep, to honor, to frame. Well, Jee-Whiz, who am I to argue with you? Thank you. Thank you so much!
When I am the artist coming to a home, with art in tow, and I get to see the excitement and the gratitude of the recipient and be in the space where the work will exist for (hopefully) generations, I feel humbled. There is a relief in knowing that this thing that I cared for for so long finally gets a home. It’s like raising a kid, you wonder where it is now, how it is affecting people, is it being cared for, will you ever see it again? When you bring your work into peoples homes, you get closure on the piece and a glimpse into the life it will lead after you are gone. Having your work sit in flat files and closets doesn't do any good for anybody. Let it go, get it out there. If they won't buy it, give it away. I mean Christ, if you wanted to make money you would have been,
I don’t know, some kind of money man.
I certified the paintings with a little card on the back detailing when the painting was shown, the page number,the date it was made, who it was specifically being gifted to and then I signed it. No way you could accuse me of just pawning my junk on ya know can ya!? I would wrap it up in brown butcher paper and with a copy of Flight so they could see their page in context. Now these pages look as important as I felt like they were when I was making them.
As I wrapped them I started thinking of the people I was giving them to. Like I said before I some of them I did not know very well, I didnt even know if they would like my work or even want a painting. I thought about the conversations I might have with them in their home, or by my van in their driveway. I thought about the questions I would ask.
What if I shared my conversations with these recipients on my website? A sort of interview detailing the conversation about whats going on with the people who I did not know that well. I mean I knew them well enough to want to give them a piece of work, but what did I really know about them? What could I gain from getting to know them better? How could our relationship improve?
Some of these people are artists, so I knew I could ask them about their work, easy. Not all of them were artists however, but that didn't mean I didn't have any questions for them. I knew there was something going on in every persons life that I would want to write about. I am fascinated with people who have something they are fascinated by. I wanted to know what they are working on, what they were excited about, raising kids, their new deck or ADU their plans for a big bar-b-q blow out or their dehydrated lizard collection.
That's how the Gifted and Talented Series was born. I wanted to let you know how I came to this project, what it was for and why I want to do it. I will be posting each interview on my website www.catchvalve.com/giftedandtalented I’ll met you know when a new article is up and hope you follow along as I gift this work away and learn a little about the people I give it to. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and who knows, maybe one day Ill show up to your house, with art in tow.
Why we Unschool
Below is the script from a talk I gave at the Life Is Good Unschooling Conference in Vancouver, Washington in May of 2025. I have posted the video to the talk at the bottom.
Anicdotal Dad
The Knox Family's Journey in Unschooling
Hello and thank you for coming here today to listen to my talk about my family's journey through unschooling and how it has affected my life in so many wonderful ways.
Today I would like to tell you about my school experience and how it led me to unschool our own children, what some of my favorite parts of living an unschooling life are, and the struggles and uncertainty I experience while our family navigates a road less traveled.
My name is Chris Knox, I live in Portland Oregon with my wife Katie and our two kids. Astoria, who is 9 and Marin, who is 7 (if you can believe that!) I contribute to our family financially by driving the city bus in Portland, but in my heart I am an artist and I have always been. I have been considered an artist by my community ever since I can remember. It was the thing in elementary school that granted me positive attention and because of that, I kept doing it. When I was 4 or 5 my mom and I lived with another single mom. When they were trying to figure out who had drawn on the walls, my mom asked the other mom, “How do you know it wasn't your child who did this?” and she said “Because my kid can’t draw that well.” Being an artist has always been a part of me.
I am a multi-disciplinary craftsman. Over the years I have explored a wide variety of mediums from sculpture and ceramics , to performance and video.
For the last decade I have been focusing on comics,
I write a daily called Honored Citizen starring this little derp I call Batman Boy, who has the lower torso of Batman's
Upside down head for some reason. Honored Citizen is about social structures, education and the working class.
I'll read this one to you since it’s quite on theme for today's talk.
Currently I'm writing a graphic novel, Judy, a story about this kid Rus who is tormented by the phantom of his 5th grade teacher Judy Turnkey.
I also design games, I am on the verge of completing my first Roleplaying Game, Guardrail, and Marin and I be will be hosting a funshop this year playing a game that we designed called Sir Crab Part 2.
So feel free to stop by and check that out if you have time.
You can find more of my work here.
OUR FAMILY
We are all artists in our family and value relationships and connection over most things. Building community and strong family ties is, we believe, essential to a peaceful, fulfilling and simple life. We love camping and being in nature, board games and video games with friends, meals and birthday celebrations with family. We search for life paths that are simple but not always easy.
Katie is at home with the kids. She is a seamstress, clothing designer and artist. She does the heavy lifting of our life. She cooks most of our meals, does bed time, schedules our flights, does the budget, finds the best deals on groceries, refuses to buy anything new and seems to pull clothes out of thin air for the kids. She works much harder than I do, has loved me more fiercely and completely than anyone ever has and is on a never ending quest of self discovery. She is a gift.
Our daughter, Astoria, who we call Story, has been dressing in black a lot lately, has had a lifelong admiration for strong women like, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Wednesday Addams and Princess Mononoke. She is finding her voice and independence in her community and finds it perfectly acceptable to draw designs on her face with markers before going out. She has this laugh that erupts like a cannon that makes me smile no matter how I am feeling. She laughs like she lives, not considering what others might think. Astoria and I talk alot in the car about social structures, world leaders, the concepts of good, evil and love. She is a wonder.
Marin is our youngest, he is a wealth of knowledge of all beasts real and imaginary. He loves to act out creatures and uses up every second of time we are able to give him. He loves youtube and roblox. Marin and I talk a lot about D&D monsters and Pokémon. We love making up card games and playing video games together. He is sensitive and has an innate sense of fairness and justice. He is the first to tell me how it could have been worse and the first to tell me how I could have done it better. He is a force.
MY SCHOOLING EXPERIENCE
In order to talk about unschooling in our life I would like to share with you a little about my own schooling experience because my school experience and Katie's school experience had to exist in such a way to make us receptive to the idea of unschooling. Had our experience been more positive I don't know if we ever could have arrived at unschooling today.
HARDSHIPS OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
I started school in rural Maine in 1984. I don’t think I ever understood why I was there. I mean, I knew that they were going to teach me about stuff that I was going to need “later on”’ but I went to see my friends, and to have fun. I loved seeing all the other kids. I loved running around the classroom, I loved pretending to be a dog for Chrissy Taylor so that she would touch me, I loved drawing monsters for the other kids then pretending to be them at recess. I loved making all sorts of animal noises. Sometimes I would be so overcome with joy I had to just jump out of my seat, or pick someone up and shake ‘em. WHOO!
So of course they labeled me as disruptive and even better slapped me with an ADHD diagnosis early on. Sweet! Now they had options. I was observed by “experts” who promptly put me on a regiment of ritalin. Problem solved.
Much to the chagrin of the administration though, the ritalin was short lived thanks to my mother seeing the drastic personality shift, and by third grade I was taken off it, which proved to be a major inconvenience to my third grade teacher.
Mrs. Ford was, at the time, known for being of the Old School. What she was in reality, was a bully and an abuser. The only thing I can remember her teaching me was the importance of staying in your seat “or else”. And no matter how many times I told myself I was going to be “good today” I still found myself being the recipient of Mrs. Ford’s “or else’s”. I just had more fun when people were looking at me and they seemed to be having more fun as well. I’m sure from Mrs. Ford’s perspective I made her job quite difficult, but my memory of that year tells me I wasn't doing anything wrong - which I wasn't. I was just a kid who was trapped in a place that wouldn’t allow him to be himself. Sometimes I would find myself on the other side of the classroom with really no idea how I got there, “Whoops must’ve wandered out of my seat again...” Mrs. Ford had no problem showing me where I was supposed to be.
“3rd grade is such an important year.” they said over and over again, I guess what they meant by that was, this was the year they showed you what teachers were really like. Before this I was having a great time. But all of a sudden it seemed school could be a cold, scary and dangerous place. I mean yeah, there were kids you had to watch out for, especially those 2 meatheads from Clifton, but I didn't know the teachers could be dangerous too.
So the summer of my 4th grade year I spent praying to god that I would get into Mr. Betterly’s class who was kind and sweet and respected. And thus began a long career of teacher hot potato. “Summer’s over son, Roll the dice and see who you git!”
MIDDLE SCHOOL
By 6th grade my ability to sit and listen had improved greatly. It would appear public school had accomplished its job! My friend Adam, who I had known since second grade once said, “You know, I think you’ve really started to grow up, you don't grab and shake me nearly as much as you used to.” And all without the use of stimulants!
But there were always going to be teachers and staff who found my behaviour problematic or disturbing. I didn't need to be running all over the place not following instructions to gain raised eyebrows or looks of disgust from faculty and staff. Whether it was my sense of humor, or my drawings, or I don’t know…I’ve never really been too sure what else to be honest. I think if that little kid had known exactly what made some people not like him, he would have changed it early on.
In 8th grade I landed the role of The Beast in our production of Beauty and the Beast and knocked their socks off. It was the most successful I had ever been in school. I fell in love for the first time that year, I met teachers involved in the show who really saw me as a likeable person. It felt like I had finally found a home in school. The behaviors that I was critiqued for and told needed to be changed were now celebrated and encouraged. “You’re not being loud enough Chris”, or “Really throw that kid across the stage.”
“I think I can do that.”
But one thing I did not expect was how the opinion of the teachers who were so concerned with me making animal noises in class and exhibiting a “strange and disturbing sense of humor” were now going up to my parents saying, “I never knew…” and “what a talent.”
THE TRAGEDY OF TRANSITION
In my hometown, Middle School is 5th-8th grade so just as I was experiencing my first real success in school I was preparing to transfer to a whole new one. This is nothing new to most of you I'm sure. All of us have had to transfer from one school to another a few times in our lives, but for me, as I have reflected on it over the years, I have come to believe it was a devastating and life altering event.
My options for highschool were limited. I could go to Brewer High, where the bullies of my early middle school years now resided, who, I was convinced, had been lying in wait, for their chance to resume their long tradition of tormenting me. The other “option” was John Bapst, a prep school that had a GPA threshold and interview process that I had no chance of getting into because of my preference for making comics of my friends, pretending when I wasn't supposed to and making people laugh, over getting good grades.
Audrey Stanton was the director of our play, she was instrumental in helping my creative development that year, was a lifelong lover of the theatre, one of the best teachers I have ever had and just so happened to be transferring to John Bapst as head of their theatre program the following year.
The sad irony is, there could have been a chance that I would’ve been able to pursue this thing that gave me so much confidence, drive and direction, with a teacher who really supported me who understood me, but because of my grades from the years before, I was not going to be able to attend a program that I was so obviously suited for. It felt like I was being punished for the performance of my past self, a kid who didn’t know who he was, what he was interested in or why he was in school to begin with.
I watched everything that made my 8th grade year special, everything that made me stand out in a positive light, vanish.
Now I’m not telling you this story to lay the blame of my unfulfilled dreams entirely at the feet of the compulsory school system and I certainly do not tell you this story today to absolve myself of my own personal choices. As we are all aware, a human life is constructed from a limitless amount of variables and conditions and no single event or even series of experiences can account for where a person is in their life. However, I think we can all agree that school, in theory, is ment to give young people tools to discover what interests them and help them be successful in adulthood. What I seem to have experienced is less of a person giving me a tool box and showing me how to use the tools inside and more like, someone giving me access to a few tools for a limited amount of time and then chucking them into the woods and telling me to go find them and build a house. By the time I was in the woods, I had pretty much forgotten what I was doing there in the first place.
HIGHSCHOOL
I had become convinced that my highschool was not going to be able to accommodate my needs. For the next three years I was in survival mode, desperate to regain any of that acceptance and positivity I had felt in 8th grade.
I never was able to find a reliable outlet for my time at Brewer High. I had a few promising leads, I joined the dramatic interpretation club and learned to do a mean Tell Tale Heart, played Reinfeild in a completely student organized production of Dracula. But all of these interests, like so many subjects in school, allowed me only the most cursory amount of exposure. This system of education we have designed allows one to take a subject only so far, because it needs to compete with all of these other subjects in the pursuit of creating “The Well Rounded Individual”.
So without the ability to dive deeply and sincerely into these subjects and activities that interested me, my areas of focus became what was easiest and safest and most of all, reliable. By junior year my areas of study in order of importance were as follows, My Girlfriend, My Friends, Smoking Pot and drawing.
In the 12 years that I was in school, I had been told that my behaviour was inappropriate, my time was owed to this institution, and my interests were not as important as the curriculum the institution provided. The system that I was supposed to be educated in consistently denied me a chance to learn about myself in any in-depth or fulfilling way because that system took up all of my time with subjects that were not going to prepare me for the person I was. It was preparing me to be a person I was never going to be. And because I resisted and did not or could not play ball, that system spent a lot of time telling me that I was failing and could get me extra help, either through special education or special medication. But now I know for certain I was not the problem in school, school was. The school I was in could not serve me, or at the very least it was serving me something I did not need.
I don't think the mistakes and failures I made in school would have been so devastating had I been given the opportunity to pursue the subjects I was interested in fully. Had I been able to engage with them in a way that was not superficial I wouldn't have felt the need to invest so much energy in my relationships or at the very least consider them defining features of my personality. I certainly wouldn't be so bored that I looked to drugs for entertainment or self medication.
It was this long, inefficient journey I was hoping to spare my children from. Not that we should avoid journeys of self discovery, but they don’t have to lead to dead ends and when we encounter bad actors on these journeys we should feel empowered and supported to say ”this isnt working, this isn't the direction I want to be going.”
We wanted our children's childhood to be directed by their own interests and desires. So in order to do that, Katie and I considered what life without school would look like.
UNSCHOOLING OUR KIDS
Three things happened that led us to unschooling.
Katie was laid off, we discovered the word “Unschooling” and COVID.
CHILD JUGGLING
In 2018 Story was 3 and Marin was 1. Katie and I were both working, she had an 8-4 career designing children's clothes for a high end brand, and I had just started my own illustrious career as a bus driver and life for me turned into, working, getting ready to go to work or sleeping. I didn’t know what my shift would be from one day to the next. Sometimes I would come home at eleven pm and sometimes I would come home at three am. Either way Katie needed to be out the door by six or six thirty and the babies were up shortly before or after. No matter how much sleep I got, Katie was going to work and those babies were going to wake up. It was hell. I would give anything to do those days over.
I would try to swaddle them back to sleep or walk around like a zombie going through the motions, seeing to their needs but not really being with them, just, processing them. I had these brand new babies that I had waited my whole life for, and now that they were here, I barely had enough energy to hold them, or time to hold them for that matter. It seemed that most of our life had turned into maintenance. Was this a sign of what was to come? Was this what partnering was for the working stiff? Getting my children to the appropriate care professionals so that I could get to my own profession to earn money to pay the care professionals?
They told us we were “in it” They told us this was the hard part and that we would “get through it”. But I didn't want to endure anything when it came to these babies. I wanted to experience it fully. (And fully awake for that matter.) I wanted to be in a place where I could enjoy them and not have to worry how I was going to function the next day. The only reason why I took this mind-numbing job in the first place was to support them. What's the point of working and making all this money if we were just going to pay someone else to be with our kids?
When did the act of raising our children become a job best left for the professionals? When did our society say there were more important things for us to do with our time? Why isn’t being a parent and raising good confident children, who will grow up into smart productive citizens, enough for our society? I don’t know, but evidently being a dad is a thing I do alongside my other jobs. Just like they told me in school, I “can’t just do this one thing all the time.”
This was not how we wanted to parent. This was not going to form a deep and meaningful connection with our children. We were working to support our family, we couldn't risk losing a close and meaningful connection with our children because we had to be at work so much.
Because from the moment I saw my daughter's long legs come kicking and flailing out of Katie, I knew this was the rest of my life. The days were numbered and I would be goddamned if I was going to spend a single day, trying to get through it, trying to endure it, waiting for it to be over, so I could get to some “better” part.
LAY OFFS
At the children's apparel company that Katie worked for, they laid people off every January, One year it was Katie's turn. They laid her off on her birthday. Oof. Turns out, it was the best thing that ever happened to our family. I don’t know if we would have been able to gather up the courage to go to a single person income, but we made adjustments, we received many blessings and Marin, who still needed his mom so much, could be back with her full time. Story, who did really seem to like her day care, was able to stay for a bit longer with a very generous scholarship to account for our income being cut in half.
STORY AND SELF ADVOCACY
Around this time Story was getting ready for kindergarten and there were some growing concerns about her ability to self advocate. She has always enjoyed alone time. From the beginning, whether at home or at daycare, Story spent a lot of her time quietly sitting looking at books or deep in pretend play. Her voice is not always the loudest one in the room and she has always taken her time when approaching things that are new. Katie had a hard time envisioning Story sitting at that little desk, surrounded by all those voices, without the ability to choose and her success contingent on her ability to use a loud voice. Katie knew from her own experience that a quiet voice will earn you your teacher's favor but often leaves one overlooked while the lion's share of the teacher's time goes to the loudest ones.
Lisa, our daycare provider, was one of Story's first friends and advocates outside our home. She agreed that Story could benefit from another year before starting kindergarten. So we made plans to keep Story at Roots to Bloom for one more year with the intention of starting kindergarten the next.
COVID-19
But the next year, COVID happened. We watched as public schools shifted and contorted themselves in ways to accommodate students in a world the school system was not built for. We saw that space our daughter would have to occupy soon look even more stark and lonely than before. Masking, social distancing, no touching? This did not seem like a very hopeful way to start your first year at school. Then classes via video calls for 5 year olds? What are you guys talking about? It just seemed the world was so desperate to hold onto this system that was clearly not working. If we weren't going to go to school why did we have to pretend that we were? We decided to pull Story from daycare and just endure the storm and send her to school whenever this thing was over.
But Katie was still having trouble seeing what school would look like for Story. During her time at home, Katie and I had reflected a lot about closeness and how good it felt to have the kids here with us. How the simplicity of this life brought us peace from having to run all over the place to make sure the kids were getting a proper education and well rounded, fulfilling experience. We were constantly talking about our own school experiences, the successes we had, the overwhelming anxiety and trauma we experienced. But I was still seeing school as this sacrifice for the greater good. School was something you just had to do. We all had to do things in this life that we didn't want to do. It was best that kids figured this out early …right?
Yeesh, what a grim assessment. “Yeah this is awful, but we all have to be places we don’t want to be.” Here I had this little girl that, to me, life didn't really begin until she came into the world and now, literally overnight, I was just going to take her from playing on the floor of our home to this big strange building and say, “GoodBye sweetie, these people will take it from here! Sorry, but we aren't qualified to give you the training you will need for this complex and changing world.”
Give me a break. Like we have any idea what skills are going to be valued in the future. How many times did a math teacher tell me I wasn’t always going to have a calculator in my pocket. How much trouble did I get into during English Class for talking or trying to make people laugh with my “‘Nother Day at the Fishin Hole” routine. (a real hit by the way) Spoiler alert, my math is no better than it was in 5th grade and here I am speaking in front of you all, reading from a script I wrote myself.
If the subject is important to the individual they will pursue it. If it's not, they won't. Why are we wasting our kids' limited childhood on subjects they are not interested in, and making them go to places they don’t want to be?
THE WORD UNSCHOOLING
One day Katie was talking to her sister about what life without school might look like for our family. Melinda has been a dedicated elementary school teacher for over a decade and an inspiring mother. She is knowledgeable and wise and her opinion has always meant a great deal to both of us. Melinda said to Katie something along the lines of “You know some homeschoolers don't even have a curriculum, they call it Unschooling.”
Just one word, like a hot ember being brought back to the cave of a prehistoric family, she laid this idea down and from that one word we stoked this idea back to a roaring flame. We read everything we could get our hands on, Peter Grey, John Holt, Kerry MacDonald, Sandra Dodd, Linda Dobson so many unschooling podcasts I was put to sleep by the gentle laughing of mothers talking about their children almost nightly for years.
I fell in love with unschooling almost instantly. How could this be real? There needed to be a catch. Why wasn't everyone doing this? The principals were so simple, the outcomes so obvious. It wasn't a lifestyle held for the rich or elite. Why hadn't I ever heard of this before? Why had I never met any unschooled people?
I began to think of friends I had a strong admiration for. I have always enjoyed people that were not smothered under the idea of what was the correct way to live a life, people who were not easily embarrassed, or were scared to take chances. People who had a clear understanding of who they were and what they wanted. Clair, who dropped out of highschool to hike the Appalachian trail, Justin, whose dad showed him how to cultivate hemp to make his own clothing, Crampton who paddled the Mississippi, Verity who never went to school and who retains a child-like wonder into her 40’s that is truly inspiring.
It turned out that throughout my life I had known a number of unschooled people. They may not have used the word, but the principles were the same. These people were always working on some project or another, and often worked jobs where they were deciding when they would work, for how long and for what pay. If I had a chance to raise kids that could turn out as happy and brave and confident and wise as these people, I was going to take it.
Simply, Seeing and Sleeping
So now I would like to share some of my favorite parts of our unschooling life.
SLEEP
Choosing when they wake up is, to me, one of the greatest gifts this life awards our children. When you create a school system that emulates factory work you can expect your sleeping routine to be the same. Trying to squeeze in life at the end of the day, knowing that the start time for the next day will remain the same no matter what, has been robbing us of our sleep and meaningful connection with our families since the industrial revolution began, creating generations of sleep deprived children who grow into sleep deprived adults. It is just one of many accepted hardships that come with the institution that has us saying “Well that's just the way it is.”
Having to get up before you are ready in our family, is the exception, not the norm. It hasn't always been pretty or easy. Katie stays with them until they fall asleep, ever night, Story has been known to wake up at 4 in the morning and get on her ipad and there have been plenty of nightmares with hours of back rubbing, but no matter how restless we are throughout the night, it simply means we sleep longer in the day, we rarely lose that rest. There is no obligation waiting for them the next day they can’t opt out of. No punishment to endure should they choose sleep.
Being in a place where the next day's demands are not impeding on sleep, allows us more options at night. Options to watch another show if we choose, eat more if we are still hungry after dinner, and most importantly, if there was a problem during the day that warrants discussion we know there will be time to talk it through when we are ready. We don’t have to talk about hard stuff in a rushed or clumsy way because we are trying to prepare for the next day, or worst of all, not address the hard stuff at all. Knowing that our family is going to get their sleep most nights no matter what the next day has in store, is a freedom families who have enrolled in school rarely enjoy.
Now I would not be completely forthcoming if I failed to mention my own schedule. As I said before I’m a bus driver and of course that means that I do have to get up at a certain time. As I have also mentioned I am a practicing artist and for the last year I have dedicated myself to quite a strict morning routine that affords me about 2 hours of studio time before I go to work. It can be rather tight and these next day obligations do weigh on me. Sometimes it seems if the slightest thing goes wrong in my nightly routine, we have an obligation after work, there is some tough emotions to work through, or we just get carried away having fun playing video games or NIght Time Lurker, (A Knox family favorite game we made up) I can find myself stressing that I won't have enough time in my studio or I wont get enough sleep.
So how does dad deal with his looming wake up time when the rest of the family enjoys a morning without an alarm clock? Well the first trick is to breathe. Being able to work in my studio is vital to my well being and mental health, but it comes before my work day so it still remains flexible. Sometimes it’s 2 hours and sometimes it’s a half hour. Knowing that it's there before my work day is huge and knowing that it will be there the day after and the day after that is even better. No matter what happens the night before I know that there will be at least some time this week for me to get the things done I need to. It’s not always perfect, sometimes I get frustrated that I am still doing dishes at 8:30 or a member of our family is having a hard time and needs help, but I try to remember that tomorrow is just one morning and if I have to use my studio time to catch up on the sleep that I lost because I had to be available, more studio days will come.
One way or another, we all get the sleep we need, we are mostly always rested and I feel like this is just one more way we show our kids they are in command of their time. It’s with rest that their unschooling journey begins.
SEEING
Almost every time that I begin to have fears about this life, when I start to question whether or not the children are getting everything they need to become “well rounded” individuals, I can almost always identify the root cause of this fear, one thing I am not doing ; Seeing.
Sometimes I can't see because I am too busy working and running errands. Sometimes I don't see because I am wrapped up in my own interests and sometimes I don't see because I have been sitting around the table with the other adults while the children are playing somewhere else. Seeing is just paying attention to what the kids' interests are, recognizing what they are pursuing in a way that is genuine and authentic.
Sometimes I will ask myself “What are the kids into right now?” Can I answer that? Do I know? Is my answer flippant? “Oh, they just watch screens all the time.”
Not true.
“Story loves Adele”, “Um she hasn't really loved Addel since she was 4.”
If I can’t speak about their interests with confidence, or my answers are dismissive, I am either not paying attention or I am letting fear assume the worst. Seeing means I am taking the time to understand the importance of the things they are excited about.
I believe that when I am seeing the children, when I am paying attention to what they are doing, that act alone puts my fears to rest. My imagination doesn't wander, I don't see each difficult moment with them as a sign of some larger systemic problem. When I am connected with the kids they can have a hard time without it being the result of me not providing enough for them.
I feel the most successful with our choice to unschool when I see them engaging in materials and subjects that interest them, not when they are following some objective I have laid out for them, or done well in some game that is designed and orchestrated by adults.
It’s easy for me to lean into a leadership role, to try to explain the rules of a game or to assume a teacher's position, but I must remember to find a place in this moment as a participant and only a guide when asked to be. That's when connection happens, that's when growth occurs. If I can quiet the noise in my head and stop myself from getting up to go do this or that, if I can stop myself from trying to direct the moment, I can see why this thing they are into is so important and the fears that we aren't “doing it right” vanish and our connection becomes stronger.
LIVING SIMPLY
Our unschooling life is rather simple. I tend to think the more simplistic we live, the happier we are. That is easier said than done. We live in the city which is complex to navigate and to survive in. Living in the age of the internet alone brings with it a host of complications for raising children that we are constantly reevaluating and second guessing. We are bombarded by a litany of images and products begging for our attention promising a happier life and we are trying to raise compassionate emotionally intelligent children while passing people on the street everyday who are in clear and desperate need of assistance we are not equipped to give them. Despite our best efforts to make things simple we find ourselves periodically taking inventory and asking, “Why are things so difficult?” and “Where did all this shit come from?” It takes a lot of nuance to differentiate between what is needed and what is wanted. What will be useful and what will pacify.
It is the simplicity of unschooling that attracted us to this path of education. In the Knox family we tend to believe that the simplest solution is usually best. It is better to walk than to drive, it is better to cook than to go out, it is better to make than it is to buy. It is better to provide for yourself than it is to receive a service.
Unschooling allows us to live a simple life. Our obligations are owed mostly to our family and if we find organizations or clubs are not meeting our expectations the kids can walk away. And they do, without judgment or guilt.
As a parent sometimes it’s hard to have those conversations. Boy Scouts was instrumental in my development as a young man, and it was something that I really wanted our kids to engage in. But after a year of us all trying to make it work, it proved to be something the kids were just not excited about.
We had to sit down and have a serious conversation about leaving.
I am constantly being reminded that just because something worked for me in my childhood, that same thing is not necessarily going to work for my kids in theirs.
Living simply and slowly gives us all time to reflect on how we want to spend our time. It is truly a gift.
PLACES YOU DON'T WANT TO BE
We didn’t choose this path because we think we are smarter than the teachers. We don’t hate school and we know that we do not have all the answers. We understand that in order for our kids to pursue their interests we will need to introduce them to the masters of those skills and are willing to spend the extra effort to make connections with those teachers.
What appealed to us about this unschooling journey is its focus on giving children a choice, not in a Fast Food menu or Netflix streaming service kind of way where one is crippled under the endless options. No, the choice this life provides reveals itself when children explore the world in their own way on their own time while we recognize those interests and guide our children to places and people that can help them develop those skills to whatever level of mastery our children choose.
To us, it is vital that they see their interests are valuable and we respect their decision to pursue them.
From an early age we are told that we have responsibilities and that our time is owed to a spectrum of people and institutions. Now is the time to eat, now is the time to sleep, now is the time to be apart, now is the time to be close. Grandma is coming to pick you up, dad is dropping you off, the bus will be here in 10 minutes, you're going to start school tomorrow.
I remember learning to watch the clock from an early age. In elementary school waiting for the day to be over so I could get back to being a kid and doing what kids do. The excitement of the weekend and the glory of summer vacation, all of these special moments that make a kid's life seem magical only exist because of what has been taken away. I would gladly trade all of my weekends and summer vacations for a childhood of self directed play and exploration with my friends.
So here I am, from an early age conditioned to endure. To be okay with sitting in a place I didn't want to be, waiting for the chance to be who I was. And that's the way it has been for most of us for most of our lives, learning to be okay with sitting and waiting, so that when we are grown up, and are paid to be in a place where we would rather not be, its not a concept that is totally foreign to us. After all, we've been sitting in places we would rather not be since we were kids.
But what if we didn't?
What if since childhood we had been choosing what our day looked like? What if we got to pursue our own interests and were not forced to do things that did not interest us. Furthermore, what if the adults in our lives showed only excitement and support for those interests and accomplishments, never asking us to qualify our interests by completing a task or filling out a form. What if we never had to “prove it”
Would those children, when grown up, be okay with sitting and waiting for a better day? Wouldn't those children recognize this job for what it was, a waste of their time and energy. You see, they had never had to settle in childhood. They were never told that their interests were less than the desires of the system or the will of adults. They lived in a community where they were not seen as empty vessels that needed to be filled by the wisdom of their superiors, but gifts who, if allowed to run and grow and play, would reveal their talents and importance.
Katie and I began to see how little we ask these very capable young humans what they want. In school they try to give choices, but they are serving so many children that not all of them can be awarded this “luxury”. So only the ones that stand out for good or for bad get the choice. I got choices because I was disruptive. “Chris, why don't you just go to the back and play with those toys.” or because I was talented, “Chris would you like to be The Beast in Beauty in the Beast?” Those that follow the rules and stay in their seat… well, they stay in their seat.
Our time here is a flash. We are a blooming flower in time laps. Each individual, a momentary expression of a species that is still in its infancy compared to other life forms on this earth, and here are our children not even 10 waiting for the day to get over so they can start getting to the business of living and learning.
“But we all have to do things we don't want to do Chris.”
Yes, writing this was difficult,
Hunting an animal for dinner is hard
Building a house is a challenge”
But the things in our life that are difficult should not have to be amended with, “You'll need this later.” That is an arbitrary hardship, a constructed challenge that seems to validate a set of tests that people who have committed their lives to a subject have proclaimed are important. Well of course it's important, to them, ask a butcher the importance of meat in one's diet, ask a baker how bread can change the world, ask a bus driver the importance of having your fare ready before you get on the bus. But I'm not going to teach my 5 year old how to transfer from the 75 to the 4 at Interstate Transit Center because studies show that 5 year olds are capable and that “They might need this later.”
We see how unschooling helps our children to figure out real problems that are happening now, that require them to develop skills now, in this moment. Like advocating for themselves when an injustice has occurred, or knowing the difference between how an alligator walks to how a crocodile walks so they can portray it correctly in pretend play.
We don't have to create arbitrary problems for them to solve and try to convince them that these problems are important. Children are masters at finding problems to solve, and within those self directed problems lay the answers to all the subjects we have been taught are so important. Our children don't need us to dictate to them, they need us to guide and to advocate and be excited about the problems that they solve.
This is why The Knoxes unschool. We want to give them time to master their interests. We want them to know that no matter what their community looks like, no matter what their society is telling them is important, they are the keepers of their own time, and they owe it to one. We want them to be able to explore their interests fully, without dead ends or false starts. We want to provide them with a place where they can focus on the actual study and practice of the subject that interests them, not focus or get distracted by a system that is meant to support that subject.
We unschool so our children can grow at their own pace. We Unschool to give our children time, time to sleep, time to see and time to be simple. And by giving them this, we get a front row seat to it all, never having to wonder how the day went, never having to poke and prod for information that will soothe our fears and anxiety. We Unschool so that we can be with them in a meaningful way.
We unschool to be closer to our kids.
Thank You
Quit
I love to quit. I love the moment where I realize, “you don’t have to be here.“ I love putting down whatever they’re making me hold. I love stepping away from wherever they’re making me stand. I love walking by all of the other people who have been told that they have to hold this and stand here as they look at me like, “where the hell does he think he’s going?” And I love being stopped by somebody in a different colored shirt as they look me up and down and say “where the hell do you think you’re going?”
It is as if a spell has been lifted, like I have crawled out of a cave that I was placed in years ago and have suddenly remembered what color the sky is. Like I have suddenly remembered there even was a fucking sky to begin with. “Oh yeah…there is something else out here.”
From the ages of 17 to 35 I had over 40 jobs. I washed dishes, I flipped omelets in front of fat cats, I washed dogs, I painted houses, I taught art to adults with disabilities. I worked in group homes for teens coming out of juvenile detention. I’ve worked in screen printing shops. I did a little of this, a little of that, with an emphasis on “a little.”
I’ve even worked at Subway.
Fucking Subway!
Except for the jobs where I was serving marginalized populations, I have never really had any kind of real investment in what I was doing. Still, every single one of my employers, whether I was picking up tiny pebbles off Bar Harbor Elites clay tennis courts or using my thumb, forefinger and middle finger to sprinkle black olives on a sandwich, they have all expected me to be invested, serious, focused. It’s a fucking joke and so is the job that I pretended to be interested in so that I woulde’t feel like a loser for living in my parents garage.
There is this expectation, this script that they feed us that you should all be able to make it on your own, should you just try hard enough. If you can’t be grateful for the pittance that you are awarded then you don’t deserve a place to live, or healthcare, or safety. Get with the fucking program Jack, play ball and all of this can be yours. A place to stand all fucking day, a thing to hold or swing or twist or turn, a person to breath down your neck while you’re humanity and desires are reduced to the color of the shirt they make you wear or the logo they put on you that they paid a life time of your salary to broadcast across the world. Do your fucking job and you will be awarded the appropriate amount. No one likes a quitter. If you quit then you gave up and if you gave up then your weak and Darwin told us long ago what happens to the weak. So get to it and be happy there is an it to get to.
But you know what I say? The quitters are the boldest and bravest among us. Sure maybe they have mental health disorders and operate from a lifetime of trauma, but they are willing to face the consequences of refusing to participate in a system we call them crazy for not participating in it. “Hate to be that guy.” you say, then you go to work and just can’t wait for another day of your life to be over. One day that could be spent in love or in awe. One day that you will never get back again and here you are wishing it was over. It’s fine, I'm sure one day you’ll really start living.
Make no mistake, your employer is not your friend, He is your oppressor and no amount of appealing to his humanity is going to raise your wages or give you a better deal. Only when you affect his bottom line will he listen. It is in refusal to work that this is done most affectively. Wether he is running a non profit, an ice cream shop, a house painting business or the U.S. fucking government, only then, when you and your friends say, “we’re not coming in today and tomorrow isn’t looking good either.” will he begin to ask, what can I do for you?
Quitting is this most powerful tool we have to fight our oppressors, but we all have to say it, we all have to quit, from those of us for whom the stakes are high and those of us for whom the stakes are low. We must have faith in our fellow worker and neighbor, faith that they will bring the skills their employers have exploited to the community of Those Who Have Quit. We have to trust that we can take care of each other. How fast would the US government stop giving missiles to Israel if we all stopped coming in. How much would a 600 square foot apartment really cost if everyone in the building refused to pay? If no one worked for one day, what humanitarian demands could be made, what dignity could we get back? What could we accomplish if we just stayed home?
I’de love to find out, but you’ll need to quit first, after all,
I have a mortgage to think about.
catchvalve
Portland, Oregon
September 15th, 2024
Rex
Even today, saying the name of Chrissy Taylor triggers a range of emotional leyden memories that are hard to contextualize. They are fossilized memories that have been scattered about the time-worn mesa of my childhood and have, until now, remained undisturbed.
When I started populating Judys 5’th grade class with characters based on kids I went to school with, Chrissy immediately took the role of “the pretty one” and as I drew the character, I began thinking more and more about her. What made this little blonde girl with the big triangle hair so special? I don't have any memories of her doing anything particularly spectacular. She was a sweet, well behaved little girl that talked to me and laughed at my jokes. Maybe at that age that was all that was needed. Maybe that is all I have ever needed in a relationship. Once I told my friend Malloy that I loved him and he said, “You know why you love me? Because I laugh at everything you say.” There are a few other reasons I love the man, but him finding me so delightful certainly helps the relationship.
Anywhoo.
I don’t have a single memory of Chrissy that is not attached to an absolute heart crushing yearning to want to be close to her. I have images burned into my brain of her walking with friends, getting off the bus and laughing and in every single one of these moments I knew I wanted her to be my girlfriend. As juvenile and uninformed I was about the concept, when it came to Chrissy Taylor I wanted her to love me. So, at some point early on in our relationship, in order to make this wish a reality, I decided to start pretending to be a dog.
She named me Rex.
Now I know what you're thinking. Jesus Christ Chris where is your self-respect, where is your dignity? But evidently you’ve never felt the cool hands of Chrissy Taylor‘s fingers sliding through your hair with your head in her lap on a gymnasium bench seat listening to Ms. Davis drone on about something or rather. You have never heard the melodic voice of the only girl you've ever truly loved calling your name, (your fake dog-name) from across the soccer field, beckoning you to come to her. Out of all the people in the world this was the first time that someone who I wanted truly wanted me. So what if I had to pretend to be a dog? Some have done far worse for far less.
Eventually Chrissy grew tired of our little game and one day pretended that I didn't exist. I'm not sure why she did this. Who can really know the motivations of children? Maybe she began to realize that the game had a different context for me than it did her, maybe some maturity bloomed in her brain half way through the year. Maybe her dad saw me barking out the window of the bus when she was walking up to her door and she told him about our charade and she was, from then on, forbidden to have a classmate pretend to be a dog for her at school. For whatever the reason, Chrissy came into school one day and when I made some weird comment to her that was the 4th grade equivalent of ”Hello”, she simply responded with “Is someone talking?”
The rest of the day was a living nightmare. I cried and I pleaded and I did all I could to keep my guts from falling out of my stomach. I kept testing my luck to see if the game had ended, making little jokes here and there only to be forced to bear witness to a cold vacant upward stare.
“Jenny, do you hear something?”
“No Chrissy I don’t hear a thing.,”
At recess I found refuge in the old industrial tire and wept. Erin Waters and her dip shit friends found me and told me I was a little baby. She swiftly became the first person I ever told to fuck off (and mean it) and her upside down head vanished up into the swamp she came from as she called back, “I’m telling!” Of course she was telling. That was the extent of Erin Waters personality and I doubt much has changed for her in adulthood.
Eventually Mr. B. had to intervene. I can’t remember what was said and of course within moments we were friends again, but Rex was gone to be sure. Run over by a bus of apathy, put to sleep by 50 cc’s of boredom, Lost forever in a National Park of maturity. Whatever the reason, the game was over.
In a lot of ways Chrissy was the model for my future relationships. My habit of losing myself in relationships, quite literally, has been something I have struggled with. I have always loved women and loved being in love. But my low self image has often left me utterly mystified at the possibility that I could be liked by people let alone loved by them, so in order to hold on to those relationships I let go of all of the other stuff that would make me lose my grip. Stuff like the things that make me me. My own self image, my values, my goals and of course my dignity.
By the time I had met my wife I had learned that you don't have to pretend to be anything to get someone to love you. Just be honest with who you are and make that clear from the beginning. I am the type of person who needs people to think he’s funny, gets really into the people they are in a relationship with and never wants to come home to an empty house. She was okay with all of those things.
Until next time.
catchvalve
Portland, Oregon
Aug 14th, 2024
7/10/24
I’m Sorry
Over the holiday I was talking to some dear friends about how I am constantly feeling the need to apologize. Especially after a social engagement. Does this ever happen to you Dear Reader? I will have a great time, sometimes I’ll even be “hot” or “killing it” then we all say our good-byes and on the ride home I begin to feel like I may have said something stupid, done something offensive. By the time I am laying in bed I am convinced that these people (most whom I have known for a decade or more) will want nothing to do with me, “Gaugh! Why did you say that?” “I’ll begin to imagine what they are saying about me on their ride home. Sometimes, even during the actual engagement I will make a joke about what they might be saying about me as they go home later that evening, “...and what was up with Chris with that comment about such & such.” It never fails to get a laugh. Although, know that I think about it, there have been a few times when people look at me like, “What the fuck is he talking about.” Oh well, some people just can’t keep up.
So anyhoo,
Here is a little piece I wrote about being sorry.
Dear Reader
I am sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I'm sorry about not being able to keep my promise of only working on a project for 20 hours before moving on to the next one. I’m sorry that I can’t post these updates once a week with any consistency. I’m sorry it took me 25 years to get a website up. I know you were waiting for it with a Winds of Winter anticipation.
I’m sorry I didn’t say thank you that one time. I'm sorry for feeling like I have to apologize to the 5 people who are going to read this and the two that remember that I said I was going to begin posting to my website every Friday. I’m sorry that I sent you a text asking if we were cool. I’m sorry that I am not more confident in our relationship. I’m sorry I don’t know what 15% of 97.43 is and after you served me my food and caught me looking up the answer on Google ™ I tipped you less. It’s just that I thought your service sucked.
I am sorry my expectations of you and the rest of the species are so high. We should have evolved from dogs. Dogs get a pass.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry that you have spent most of your childhood listening to me apologize. I’m sorry if I’m making you feel like I don’t know what the fuck I am doing.
I’m sorry that I don’t know what the fuck I am doing.
I’m sorry, Dear Reader, that when you tell me you don’t think you're enough I don’t spring into action and immediately reassure you that you are.
I’m sorry that when you are doubting yourself I say, “Maybe you’re right.” or that maybe there's a reason you’re thinking that. I’m sorry that you have to tell me how to reassure you. I’m sorry if you feel like you are living with a robot or an alien or a brick wall that doesn't understand the fundamentals of human emotion or sensitivity.
I’m sorry that I can’t make any money being an artist. I’m sorry that I don’t know how to write up a contract. I’m sorry I am a shitty business person and am a pain in the ass to work with. I’m sorry that I made you think that we were going to be a bohemian artist who lived in a box or a couch or with a woman who had her shit together. I’m sorry I made you think you were going to be Basquiat. I'm sorry that by the time you were ready to start a family you had taken out too much debt for a degree you never got and to pay it off I made you work a job you couldn't stand and that kept you away from the family you desperately wanted to be with.
Like I said before, I’m sorry I don’t know what the fuck I'm doing.
I’m sorry that I told you over text how you weren't maintaining our friendship very well and how I had been feeling insignificant to you. I’m sorry I didn’t say those things to your face and then when I did see your face we pretended like I didn't say anything at all. Fuck it. At least I saw you. Mission accomplished.
Dear Reader, I’m sorry by the time I texted them it was ok to call me it was already too late. I’m sorry that you couldn’t get your shit together long enough to say you were sorry. I’m sorry that I’ll never know if you were sorry.
And of course I am sorry for this insufferable rant I have put you through Dear Reader. I’m sorry for being ungrateful. I’m sorry I can’t appreciate what I have and I’m sorry that I can’t live everyday thankful I am not starving to death or watching my family get blown to bits.
Now, who wants ice cream?
See you next week Dear Reader.
I promise.
catchvalve
Tierra Del Mar, Oregon
4th of July Weekend, 2024
6/21/24
Qualified
I saw a comment the other day that said, “most of the bio comics I read are about authors who do not lead interesting lives.”
I guess they never read Maus.
But I’ve been thinking about this all week. This project I am working on, Judy, is biographical (as much as anyone can truly write something biographical) and true to social media comments, it has sowed doubt into my own work. What makes me think that I am qualified to write about my life? I have never escaped a death camp, been imprisoned in a cell by my nextdoor neighbor and forced to have his baby. I hiked some of the Appalachian Trail when I was 18. I jumped off a 50' tressesel once. Back in 1992 I went to The Philmont Boy Scout Camp in New Mexico and was not raped by scout master. As Laura Flynn Boyle says in the movie Happiness, “If only I had been raped.” Then I would really have something to write about. How could I possibly be qualified to write an interesting, compelling biography? But you make the most with what you got, so my white, middle class, rural, upbringing with a touch of lower case “t” trauma will just have to do.
A compelling biography does not have to focus on the events that have occurred in your life. Buttering toast can be intriguing if you describe how the characters are receiving the world around them and the emotions they are navigating. Without an honest and in-depth depiction of what that character is feeling, the story of a person escaping the prison of their tormentors could be left feeling hollow, while my story about being yelled at once by my 5th Grade teacher could start a new hashtag.
The older I get the more I come to believe that to really make a living at this you need to write stories that people can relate to. I want to be accessible so I'll write a story that I think you can all see yourselves in. Maybe the next one will be about Space Dragons, that one can be for me.
As victims we spend more time with our assailants memory than they do of us. Over the years, I have thought about some of the things she had said to me and at the risk of sounding cliche, this project is a way for me to find some closure. I am writing Judy because in my 5th grade year I had a teacher who was a real mother fucker and I think it is a compelling story that many people can relate to,
Also I need the money.
catchvalve
Portland, Oregon
Summer Solstice, 2024
6/14/24
My New Work Schedule
In the last month or so since I finished my website, I have implemented a new work/life schedule that seems to be sustainable. I am always trying to find the perfect combination of family time, work, creative pursuits and exercise and this combination seems to show promise. After a decade of driving the bus, I am finally able to have options in what route I drive and what time I have to go in and this has been crucial in creating this new schedule. So for the summer, I have dedicated myself to a pretty strict routine.
4:00am wake up studio time
6:00am. Ride my bike to work.
7:00 Drive the bus until 4:15pm
4:45pm Ride my bike home.
5:45pm Spend time with my family. And most importantly don’t think about drawing or everything else that I should be doing.
8:00pm in bed, ( and exhausted)
How and where I have been making art for the last decade.
I drive the public bus in Portland, Oregon. It’s certainly not what a set out here to do but the pay allows us to not have to worry about money too much and it allows my wife to stay home with our kids which is very important to our family. The company I work for and the union that represents us subscribes to a seniority based system. The longer you are here, the better schedule you get. As of 2024 I have 10 years.
There’s all kinds of different ways to drive the bus. You can sign a run and drive the same bus five days a week, you can be a part timer and do 3 to 5 hour split shifts, you can work the weeks people are on vacation or you can be on The Board.
The extra board is a daily list of all of the runs that are not being covered due to people marking off sick. As an extraboard operator, my job was to show up to work and sit around and wait to “be up”. Once I was up I would watch the sheet where other operators signed in. If someone didn’t sign the sheet by the time they were meant to, I would go out and drive their bus. I never knew what bus I was going to drive and I never knew when I was going to be home.
I chose the board for a few reasons, but mainly it was for the “sit time”. During the time I was waiting for work, I got paid and as you can see by my volume of work, I was never without something to do. The problem with this strategy was I never knew how much time I going to get to draw. Sometimes I would go into work, sit their for eight hours and other times I would walk through the door and have to go straight to driving. It was a really chaotic way create art. Somedays I would be excited to draw and not get any time and other times I would have all the time in the world and struggle to put pencil to paper.
Now I have a 9 to 5ish type schedule, I can a lot a few hours every day to drawing. Although it’s not as much time as I would like to have, it’s guaranteed focused time (better than getting zero hours one week and then getting 15 hours a week later) It seems to be working for me. That stability and predictability fills me in a way that makes the monotony of a working stiff bearable. In essence knowing that I am going to get a few hours to draw each days gives me a reason to get up in the morning and go to bed at night.
So that is my new schedule. If you want to keep up with these posts you’ll find a new one every Friday. I will be focusing on Judy for a while. I know I have posted about my work cycle and spending 20 hours on each project and all that, but I have neglected Judy for over a year and I already have a lot of time invested in this project. I feel like I need to get at least the pencils laid out before I move on. Follow your bliss as they say. Next week I’ll talk about my motivations for writing Judy and what I hope the work will accomplish. Below I have posted a few new character turn arounds from the July 4th segment of my book. If your are interested, you can read the Judy script here.
Thanks for taking the time.
-catchvalve
JUDY
5/10/24
Hello every one! This is my first post!
Every week I will post current work to help you get a better idea of where I am in my projects and give you some insight in the techniques I use and just what is going through my head.
Currently I am working on my graphic novel Judy, a 70 page monster that has been kicking around for a few years now. Here’s what it’s about.
We follow Rus Goss from childhood to adult hood as he is plagued by the specter of his emotionally abusive 5th grade teacher Mrs. Turnkey.
I wrote the script in 2020 and have been doing lots of sketches since then.
I have a series of projects that I work on intermittently. Each project I devote 20 hours to and then move on to the next one. If you want to know more about this way of working you can find more information about my work cycle here.
Below you’ll find character turn arounds of Rus’s 5th grade class.
Thank you for accompanying me on this journey.
