I made a long-overdue visit to my family in Tucson this past week. As a proud native New Englander, I sometimes shake my head that in disbelief my entire immediate family now calls the western U.S. home. But, I’m one of them, soooo…anyway, my mother was giving me a tour of her new house. It’s a ritual of ours when I visit that she shows me some relics of my childhood. The items can vary from favorite books to my old baseball cards, which I’m convinced I’ll be able to sell to help pay for my eldest’s first year at Yale. Which I’ve also convinced myself she’ll be admitted to (hey, at least I haven’t gone completely delusional with designs on an academic scholarship). This particular trip to the Museum of Geoff was pretty standard: some old clothes, various knickknacks I’d been too lazy to take when I’d moved out after college years ago. Then, my mom pulled out the showstopper.

I said to my mother, “Oh, cute. When did I do this, when I was four or so?” She replied, “No, you were nine.” What the what?! This card is less a heartfelt Father’s Day gesture from a boy to his father than a record of my heretofore-unknown simplemindedness. This monstrosity is the equivalent of 15 embarrassing childhood photos. The illustration for the age is a bit, let’s say, rudimentary. Having kids, I can say that this is no later than kindergarten-level artwork, if that. It almost makes me feel bad for savaging my own kids’ artwork over the years. To be fair, I did nail the curly hair, beard and mustache. And I needed a teacher to write the card out for me! Apparently I had yet to learn the word “teacher” to describe dear old dad’s profession. But I must’ve been way off on his diet, as he couldn’t have survived another 30 years on a diet of red meat and alcohol.

Needless to say, I was little taken aback. I was a voracious reader in my formative years, and thought I was fairly handy with a pen. Seems as though I’ve been leading myself down the primrose path about my early abilities for years. Ah, well. It’s the sentiment that counts…unless the teacher had to come up with that, too.