Paper

I was a very lucky little boy. I never wanted for blank paper on which I could draw. My father worked in printing, and he brought home reams and reams of all sizes, shapes and colors. The limit was my imagination. I favored a pencil at first for my scribblings. This allowed me to erase and refine my line.
But that wasn't really necessary, since whole forests had surrendered themselves to me for that purpose. My fourth grade art teacher only needed to tell me once to be more committed to my lines. No more of those little sketchy chicken scratches. Strong, bold, and confident. If I didn't get the spine of a stegosaurus just right, I could turn the page over and start again. If that didn't pan out, then there was always the rest of that tablet. Or the one after that.
If you were to apply a Malcoklm Gladwell ten thousand hour rule to my experience, I would imagine that the time I spent bent over a blank piece of paper in those days brought me pretty close to that illusory total. My parents used up all their refrigerator magnets on the drawings I did. And those done by my younger brother. And my older brother. Horizontal surfaces, especially those at our cabin in the woods, were covered by pictures we drew.
It is quite likely that the conspicuous lack of a television in that cabin had something to do with my voluminous output. Feel bad about missing that show? Why not draw it? Are there movies you remember and want to see again? Before there were VCRs and DVRs, there was my paper and pencil.
All that paper. By the time I was in junior high, I had the bug and I couldn't shake it. I didn't want to. I graduated to a black pen. No more erasing for me. I had confidence in where that line was going. I was going to be Frank Frazetta. Or Charles Schulz. Or maybe I was just going to be me, hunched over that table, tongue tip sticking out of the corner of my mouth as I drew.
And drew.
And drew.
I never ran out of paper. Not ever.
Somewhere there are tablets full of ideas that I barely started or didn't quite finish. After my freshman year in college, when I left the idea of being a studio art major behind, I slowed my consumption of paper. Sometimes those ideas still light up my imagination. And I look around for something to draw on.