My father is an artist.

We come from a long line of artists, writers, teachers, musicians and nutjobs.

Growing up, I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn much to the chagrin of every coach whoever saw my 5'9-by-Freshman year frame. Few gross motor skills limited my participation in sports to Cross Country and Track.

Anyway so my Dad had a thing for not just good, but stellar penmanship and hand control. In the summers in grammar school through Freshman year, we had exercises to do everyday to promote hand-eye coordination in the realm of fine motor skills. He was maniacal about it. Pages of capital and lower case cursive and print letters, passages of literature to copy and these long unbroken cursive lower case Os we would write in a unbroken string with looked like one long overlapping slinky--we wrote line after line after line.

He was also adamant the ability
to write in a straight line on unlined paper,
judge perspective, size and shape,
pick dead center in a design
and draw a straight line be skills we mastered.

He was right. All those skills I take for granted now, but they played out well when I ran a design company or taught in the classroom. Early on I was not a first picked for teams or anything, but by gosh I won many a handwriting and art competition. Teachers marveled at my penmanship not realizing the implications it had for later OCD like tendencies which now play out in my petty compulsions for:

pictures hung straight
centerpieces centered
the mat on the floor in front of the sink straight
a car parked straight in it's parking spot.
books on a shelf lined up and faced nicely
the bows on the back of Third Oldest child's dress being evenly fluffed
address labels on the horizontal...

and so on and so forth.


I even fix displays in stores...
I've tried to stop, but I can't help it. The guys up in the camera room prolly laugh their ass off when they see me stop in my tracks and then back up to where that last towel on the endcap is sitting just a little wonky.

Hubs likes to play a game where he'll leave something meant to be straight, crooked to see how long it takes before I can't stand it... usually not long.

Today however,
Hubs came home with another kind of thing to drive his wife nuts.
It was a slip of paper which said: www.woodgears.ca/eyeball.
He grinned at me and said, "Go ahead, I want you to try this."

I looked at him a little perplexed, but acquiesced.
The site was a eyeballing game which measured all the little fine motor, hand-eye kinds of skills I grew up honing.

Oh.
my.
God of Rulers, Protractors and Compasses!

The laurels of vindication have been placed on my brow!!!
::insert mad, gleeful laugh here::
I may suck at getting a ball in the hoop, or into left field or over a net,
but I can still find the equidistant point in a triangle, line or circle by God!
That's right, babies!!!
I gotz skillllllllllz.
I can still, with my maniacal eye,
determine lines of convergence and right angles
AAAAAAAAND do it so well I got a place on this site's These Are the Best Out of the Last 500 to Try This Stupid Time Eating game roster.

They made up a sport for truly OCD driven--
I mean, the fine-motor skill gifted.
There's a contest and everything.
I'm positively giddym I tell ya!
aglow with victory!!!
well and totally calling my Dad.

Post edit: Seems I lost my place in the top 10 overnight.
A 2.48 score is enough no longer.
::sigh::
Victory and validation snatched in blink of an eye.
::eyes narrowing and hands flexing::

I'll be back.
There's a website I have to go visit.