My sister is an artist and my father could have been. I never got the gene. This nonfiction piece exemplifies why it is better that I write than draw. Originally published in July 2022 by Potato Soup Journal, which, unfortunately, is no longer published.

Learning to Draw

by DL Shirey

An art teacher once called me retarded. She was criticizing my drawing, but I took the adjective personally.

To be fair, this was in the late 1980s, long before political correctness disallowed that pejorative term for the developmentally disabled. Back then, the word wasn’t necessarily used to describe someone’s abilities, but as criticism for a task poorly done. A half-hearted attempt to make a bed, for instance, could be called retarded if the sheets were lumpy and the blankets hung askew. This condemnation did double-duty, disparaging the bed itself, as well as the person who made it.

No one believes this, but I have witnesses. This short story was finished just a few weeks before COVID was unleashed upon the world. Ask anyone in my writing group.

Prescient though this story may have been, publishing it has been problematic. Didn’t matter that this one had hyperbaric chambers, Elvis impersonators and a dog named Mr. Doodles, there were too many stories of plague and pandemic to go around. Now that the world has tilted back toward its axis, the good folks at Black Sheep Magazine (on Amazon exclusively) bring you my tale in issue #3.