I would have never thought to use the phrase, even if I was aware of it — “Up to code” — all I knew was that everything I loved at Central Junior High was deep in the basement. Were there even windows in the art room? I can’t be sure. Because truth be told, it all felt like a window, a magic doorway to travel. It was, in my teenage vocabulary, wide open!  

The time we spent on each medium was merely to get a taste. Before the wheels stopped spinning, or the clay dried on our eager fingers, we were off to the dark room. We drew grids on cartoons from the Sunday papers and duplicated panels from the Wizard of Id. Was it good? We didn’t even wonder, because our thin, long haired teacher, said things like no other junior high teacher from the upper levels. He said, “that’s cool,” and shook his head slowly. Short of snapping fingers, for one hour a week, we were the beatniks of Central Junior High.  

It was ironic, I suppose, to feel so free in this darkened basement, but I did. And it was easy to be brave below, where no one else was watching. I pocketed the dreams, hoping, willing even, that one day I would take them out of the basement, into the light of day. Stuffed deeply, it took many years, but here I am. Out in the open. The wide open! And I look at the walls covered in portraits and travels. I thumb through my sketchbook. I share with you. The world. 

I see the paint on my thigh as I type the words this morning.  I shake my head slowly, my heart up to the only code it knows, and I think, that really IS cool.