The second day of the ACF was Seniors day (1991- fresh outta high school). As I said, there were old people everywhere in their walkers and rascal scooters. Hanging out talking and just doing their old people thing. An old lady happened to come up to me, sit down and talk for a while. Ya know, like they do… I’m a nice kid so I let her sit there and talk. She told me all about her grand kids, her bridge partners and how she had just lost her husband, etc… We probably talked for 15 minutes or more before she asked for a caricature.

She had asked me if I ever had a hard time drawing wrinkles and I told her I didn’t know because this was the first time I had really done them for money, and I’d never had to draw them before. I drew lots of wrinkles on her picture while I talked to her. She was such a nice lady and we were just talk, talk, talking away and I was just draw, draw, drawing them wrinkles… In jaggy, black, inky, sharpie marker lines. Tons of em. I wanted to get them just right! After I was finished, I gave her her drawing and she handed me $5 and said thank you. She looked at it for about a full minute without saying a thing. Then walked away silently and as she turned the corner to go behind one of the craft barns, I saw her wrinkle up her face and wipe some tears away. I felt horrible and vowed to be much much more careful the next time I had to draw some wrinkles, despite my lack of skill. That one probably left a bruise… Later on a friend of hers came over and chewed me out for drawing a bad picture of her.

The next wrinkly person I drew probably looked like they were 25.

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