I always liked plans and lists and papers of that sort so when the
opportunity arose in junior high to take a drafting class I signed up
with all due haste. As it happened the drafting teacher was also the
wood shop teacher so I had couple of classes with him. In drafting we
learned the very basics and then he turned us loose on the coolest
project I may have ever done in school to that point – we got to
draft our dream house. That was the whole assignment for a couple of
weeks was just to draw whatever ridiculous house we wanted and we
would get credit. Well, a class full of thirteen and
fourteen-year-old’s mostly just render grotesque monstrosities
completely lacking in any design subtly or the basic provisions for
indoor plumbing, heating or electricity. Actually that is not
entirely true we all were issued a template of standard architectural
symbols and one of them was a urinal. There is nothing more alluring
to the mind of a young male designer than to pop a urinal in a alcove
or nook somewhere near the entryway and also in the den. Our class
was, with a single exception, all boys so once the idea was out in
the air there was a urinal rush and I think most, if not all, of the
final houses had one or ten. Many of the houses where designed to be
build over a cliff, underwater, in mountains or any other of various
James Bond villain domicile scenarios. The only grading criteria
seemed to be nice legible lettering which would normally be my
Achilles Heal but for a reason beyond my understanding when I focused
on architectural stylized writing I had a decent hand. As a point of
fact the one and only time I have been praised for my handwriting was
when the teacher was looking for examples of perfectly rendered 6's
and 9's and took one of my pages to show other kids how to make
really good ones. It was one of my proudest moments. My finished
house had a terrarium through the middle of it and a cavern room with
a platform and a ramp that I was really proud of designing.
