Sketchism

Yesterday was an exhausting and bizarre day. I started my morning off by almost getting into an altercation with a pickpocketting hobo. This young hispanic dude was standing directly behind an old man who was peacefully reading a magazine. Before he could stick his hand in the old guy’s back pocket I stopped and stared at him about 5 feet away. He looked at me and retreated back slowly. The old guy had no clue anything was going on behind him. I started walking down the street, dressed in my longsleeve shirt and tie, illustration project in hand, when I decided to turn around and see if the pickpocket was at it again. He remained where I had left him 5 seconds before. I stopped and gave him the hairy eyeball again. He stared back. This lasted a few seconds before I walked away yet again only to turn around and see if the thief would attempt something on me or the old guy. By now I was about thirty feet away and he felt safe enough to start calling me names and asking me what I was staring at. This startled the old man and he continued to walk across the street. The derelict stood by himself continuing to call me names and act tough. I shrugged him off and walked the remaining two blocks to my school. Upset and concerned about the whole situation, I approached a group of 3 school security guards and told them what happened just down the block and what happened next upsetted me even more. The young hispanic security guard didn’t even look at me and simply said, “call Miami Dade,” and he walked off.

What bothered me the most is that the victim of the whole thing could have been a college student or professor or any other human being and all this jerk of a security guard could find the nerve to say is to call someone else. I had no time to argue or fight or make accusations. My presentation would be in a matter of 10 minutes and I had some cutting and pasting to do.

I rushed upstairs, cut the remainder of my illustrations and mounted them on the boards. I had enough time to practice with my teammate before presenting our concepts and rough sketches to our professor, whom was impressed that we were the only teamed that dressed up professionally. He loved our ideas and gave us the go-ahead to proceed in coloring and developing the illustrations.

So it was definitely an interesting morning. The rest of the day consisted of coloring in more illustrations at work and fighting the narcolepsy creeping over me. I only had about 3 hours of sleep the night before.

It took me an hour longer than usual to get home.Ever since daylight-savings came, traffic has significantly increased and so has my frustration. My mentor and I concluded some 5 years ago that when it begins to get darker an hour more than usual, Miami people tend to panic and they decide to go home earlier. This could be the only explanation, unless the real reason involved the government putting alien micro-organisms in the water of all the uptight hispanics in South Florida. But that wouldn’t do much. They’re already crazy.