A Calling

 Part of this memoir is about my time at the larger studios. Eventually trying my hand at creating stories with my own characters. But then there’s the part about the struggle of life. To believe in myself. To choose a path. To find work, the inner doubts of whether or not I could succeed always haunting me. 

Growing up we lived on the corner house right next to the schools I attended. All through high school I would run across the street at lunch time. My mother would make me a grilled cheese sandwich and for 30 minutes I got lost in the voices and Hoyt Curtain rifts of music of the Flintstones. I knew the dialogue by heart.  

I knew the stories by heart. 

The Hot Piano with '88 Fingers Louis'  Dripper about a seal that follows Fred home from an aquarium, and 'the New Neighbors' starring the Gruesomes . Oh and another favorite 'Giggles Flintstones' with Fred and Barney spending the night in a haunted mansion, only to find out it was all a prank. 

I found the characters charming and relatable, because I often saw them dealing with the same issues my mother and father did. Much funnier. Getting a new pet, adjusting to new neighbors, camping disasters, money class structures to name a few.  

The times during my life that I thought “that happened in the Flintstones.”  I loved watching and listening to the charming sincere characters caught in relatable situations every weekday at noon. 

I wanted to do art and I LOVED animation. 

I'd heard about an animation program at Sheridan College, about 30 miles from where I lived in Hamilton Ontario. I’d heard that this program had teachers that had come from Disney. 

The advice I got from the counsellor in high school was that a community College wasn’t going to give me a good career. My grades were too high (they were not high compared to today’s standards) I also love animals and thought about becoming a vet “Look at the vet courses in college, they’re cage cleaning (assistant) courses -  not becoming an actual vet.” Guidance counselor, Westmount high school. 

At the time I wondered, “Who are those lucky people that get to make cartoons for a living?” 

Even so, I decided to leave for Guelph to pursue becoming a vet, and ignore my dream of working in animation.