As should come as no surprise to anyone who regularly reads this stupid blog, I was something of a weird kid.
I was strenuously shy, socially awkward and regularly hindered by bouts of self-doubt. I was endlessly self-conscious about a physiognomical anomaly (I was born with only a partial eyelid on my left eye, which — along with making me look slightly different — came with an early, pediatrician-mandated requirement for me to periodically wear an eyepatch over my “good” eye to help buffer the vision in the afflicted one — I do not recommend this for your children). Matters were not helped in this capacity by my parents’ acrimonious divorce, which had transpired around the same time as the happy occasion of my birth. While something of a common problem, at the time (divorce was all the rage back then, as I understand it), it did indeed come with accompanying fallout that took a complex toll on myself and my sister that, even now, we are both still coming to terms with. Beyond all that stuff, I had no interest in sports, was essentially a slight kid with narrow shoulders and I had something of a pointedly macabre sensibility.
But there was one thing that saved me. I could draw.
Prone to spending hours in my room filling up pads with ornate drawings of fanged horrors ripe for an H.P. Lovecraft novel, I reveled in my rudimentary gift for turning a blank piece of paper into a portal into another world. When I was in third grade at St. David’s, the private grammar school on the Upper East Side I was ridiculously fortunate to be able to attend, my mother went in for a conference with my homeroom teacher. As I’ve heard it recounted, she took my mom aside and expressed an emphatic concern for my well being. “Every time I ask him to draw something,” she said, “it comes with horns, bat wings, tentacles and bloody fangs.” Mercifully, my mom laughed it off. “Oh, that’s just his little way of looking at the world.”
Despite being this little oddball, my nascent talent for illustration earned me a tiny modicum of respect from my otherwise suspicious classmates. I couldn’t kick a soccer ball without giving myself a concussion, but I could draw the shit out of anything you asked of me. This particular ability was recognized, encouraged and nurtured by one, specific teacher at my grade school — a Mr. Nik Puspurica.
Mr. Purpurica was a tall, big-hearted, pipe-smoking Texan with an exotic Greek (I think) last name. He spoke with a warm, Southwestern drawl and very rarely parted with his cool. Whether you were artistically inclined or not, everyone looked forward to Mr. Puspurica’s art class. You’d get assignments and grades just as with every other subject, but the accent was always on creative expression and exploration. He’d give us introductory walk-throughs about using different media, but would then let us rip — encouraging us to let our imaginations commandeer our grasps of the tools at our disposal. While I may have struggled with speaking up in other classes or wrestled with understanding certain other fields of study (I barely made it out of math class alive), I felt entirely at ease in art class — something Mr. Purpurica noticed from the get-go.
While he gave everyone his full attention, Mr. P took my investment in art very seriously, regularly encouraging me to try new disciplines and broaden my scope. He’d never let me abandon a project when I’d gotten discouraged by my failure to master it immediately. He taught me to be patient and to follow through. I remember privately beaming with a pride that almost overwhelmed me when, upon the completion of one drawing I’d done, he immediately tacked it up on the board behind his desk and left it there for all the other classes to see. It was a validation I’d never encountered before. In my ten years at St. David’s, Mr. P’s classroom was my sanctuary for learning new things and a confidence-building safe haven that prepared me to better deal with the rest of the world.
I owe that all to Mr. Puspurica.
I only saw him fleetingly after I graduated from St. David’s in 1981. I gather he stayed on at the school for another seven years. I remember spying his name and reaching out on one social media platform or another several years back, but never heard back from him. I always wanted to get back in touch and let him know what a profound effect he’d had on me as a strange, shy little kid.
Yesterday, I was very sad to field a note from my school that Mr. Puspurica evidently passed away back in May of this year.
Thank you, Mr. P, wherever you are. I hope you know you made a huge difference.
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