Now What?

By Gordon Hopkins They say it's the journey, not the destination. I've never really bought into that notion. For better or for worse, I am and always have been a very goal oriented person. That temperament has served me well in deadline-driven jobs like journalism. However, it also means I seem to have spent my entire life trying to accomplish something, waiting for something to happen, waiting until I am finished, waiting until the next project comes along.I may have been about eight years old when I first became aware of this. More likely, it was 10. It could have been when I was 12 but I don't think I was that old. In any case, it was around that time I had my first ever existential crisis.The first of many, of course.At that age, my primary occupations were watching cartoons and playing with my toys. There were other things, like school and dinner and going to the doctor when I developed hives after playing with some pink insulation (which is a toy I do not recommend) but I considered those merely distractions from my life's work of toys and toons.When watching cartoons, TV would pay the bills by occasionally interrupting the cartoon to show some commercials. Commercials for what? Toys, of course. The primary viewer of cartoons is also the primary market for toys.In the advertising biz, they call that synergy.As a bright, curious, goal-oriented whelp, I was naturally drawn to the toys that allowed me to be creative. I remember one manufactured plastic doodad that I saw on TV all the time and, as I'm sure was the intention of the marketing department of Hasbo, Inc., pestered my folks incessantly for one until they gave in and got it for me.If you don't remember Spirograph, it was this plastic thing with plastic wheels and things with holes and you stick a pen in the hole and draw things with the plastic things and…you know what? I just realized I have no idea how to describe this thing. It was one of the most iconic toys when I grew up in the 70s, but I can't really explain it coherently.No problem. That is what we have Wikipedia for, which describes Spirograph thusly, “Spirograph is a geometric drawing device that produces mathematical roulette curves of the variety technically known as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids. The well-known toy version was developed by British engineer Denys Fisher and first sold in 1965.”Wow. That makes it sound a lot more dreary and a lot less fun than the commercials made it seem.Anyway, my folks (or Santa) gave in and got me a Spirograph one Christmas.I couldn't wait to get started. I opened up the box, grabbed some paper and set everything up on the really nice drafting table my father had bought me the previous Christmas. (Undoubtedly the best Christmas present I ever received as a child and probably the only one I regret not still having.)Then I got to work. Spirograph was a lot harder to use then the commercials made it seem. On TV, colored spirals were made with smooth, fast, rotating movements. My own attempts were slow and jerky. The pen kept slipping out of the hole in the plastic wheel, leaving unsightly marks across the paper and forcing me to start over.Eventually, I got it to work. It is weird that, decades later, I can still see in my mind's eye what that first ever spiral looked like. I can't remember where I put my good shoes this morning but I still remember that spiral was red and blue because I switched colors half-way.If you remember the earlier part of this column and are wondering, where does the “existential crisis” part come in, I'm getting to that.Once finished, I held up my first ever drawing of a perfectly symmetrical spiral to examine my handiwork.It was at that point I asked myself, “Now what?”After all that hard work, what was I supposed to do with this thing when it was complete? Was it art? Did I expect my parents to hang it on the refrigerator? Was I supposed to frame it and hang it on a wall and hope some art critic declared me the new Mondrian? No, I'm not going to explain who Mondrian was. Look him up.I tried out my new Spirograph a few more times, more out of a sense of obligation than desire. Whether it was my folk's hard-earned cash or the efforts of Santa's elves, someone went to the trouble of getting me a Spirograph and I felt I should use it. Still, I lost interest pretty quick once I realized all I was getting out of it was bunch of colored rings on paper that would sit in a drawer and never be seen by anyone.It may seem like I'm picking on Spirograph but there were a number of other toys when I grew up with the same problem and they are legion. Remember Lite Brite? Shrinky Dinks? What about the Etch-a-Sketch? What kind of sadist invents a tool for creating art and then makes it impossible to keep that art. What is the point?Still toys like Spirograph and all the others serve an important function in the development of children.The pointless expending all your energy in creating something with no value that no one will appreciate is great training for adulthood, when children grow up and have to get jobs.Oh, and in case you were worried, I found my shoes. They were in the back seat of my car. I don't know why.

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