The Mustachioed Boy

Last week, while sitting in the car, trying to muster up some calm...trying to round up the courage to step out into the bright sunshine and face another couple of hours of...whatever...and I had an idea. I reached for some paper, and I started scribbling. Before I knew it I had twenty something pages of The Mustachioed Boy, and an idea of what each page looked like. It was good. Good enough to put the few people that I shared it with in stitches. I could close my eyes and see almost every page. That's how I muster up the strength to step into other people's lives sometimes. I imagine things. I make things up. I tell myself stories, and scribble, and squint at blank pages. Sometimes the only way to find enthusiasm is to remind myself that inside of me...in all of us...is a bottomless well of incredible creativity and positivity...kid stuff, at least, that's probably the last time that you tapped into it. I crack the shell on that incredibleness all the time. The problem is that I never do anything with it. I'm never pushed to make something of it,a nd there's a lot of it.

The Mustachioed Boy...hmm, I don't know where he came from. I only know that he was a good guy to think about before I talked that kid into rehab...before his Mom cried and cried and cried, I tried to forget just how not good some people's lives are. The Mustachioed Boy helped. Pencils and paper...ideas...they help. It's the post-scribbling, idea hangover that I need to work on. It's strange how some of us manage things...just what our release valves look like. Apparently mine looks like a little boy with a mustache.