Hanging on the wall of my father’s home office is a framed and matted scratchboard piece I made in high school. A guy beating a bongo drum. Actually, it’s a character from a story I wrote when I was 15.

I created the Bongo Drummer in Mr. Krigstein’s illustration class. I was 16 or 17. I forget. What I do remember is how much I hated Mr. Krigstein for foisting scratchboard on us.

Creating an image with scratchboard is difficult. Basically, you etch away at the outer black wax coating with an Exacto knife to reveal the white board beneath. It’s a painstaking and unforgiving medium because there’s no margin for error. No way to erase a mistake. Your best hope is to plan ahead and think in reverse about light and shadow.

I was lousy at scratchboard. It exposed all of my weaknesses. So I hated it. And I hated Krigstein.

He was a stocky old Jewish fellow with round glasses that made him look owlish. When he was mad — and he angered easily — he seemed to froth at the mouth like a demented junkyard Doberman. The most minor of classroom disturbances  triggered his coiled spring bark.

Once, I mustered the courage to publicly challenge his abuse of power. Krigstein fixed me in his unwavering raptor gaze and said, “Know what? You, Mr. Jones, you’re CONNIVING.”

I looked up the word as soon as I got home. Conniving? Me? Krigstein promised we’d only suffer scratchboard for a single semester, then changed his mind and sentenced us to an entire year of that torture. If anyone was conniving, it was him.

Conniving indeed.

One day, Krigstein focused his vindictive hostility on this kid Alex for wearing a sleeveless shirt to school. He made a huge stink about it and then ordered Alex to cover up with a jacket. When Alex refused, Krigstein sent him to the principal’s office. All this over a shirt.

Alex was one of those tough kids you tried to avoid. In junior year, my friend Bob C. started hanging out with Alex and his tough kid crowd. One day, Bob approached to deliver a message on Alex’s behalf which must have been awkward for him. Bob said, “Alex wants you to know that if you don’t stay away from Susan K., he’s gonna kick your ass.”

At the time, I was hopelessly infatuated with Susan K. Although justifiably intimidated by the threat of violence, I also found it horribly romantic. What better way to profess my undying love for Susan than to risk personal safety just to keep flirting with her in the hallways? Sure, it would hurt if Alex kicked my ass. It would hurt a lot. But then I’d be the hero who refused to back down. In the name of love. It was clearly win-win for me.

Thankfully, Alex never made good on his threat but I remained wary of him. Still, when Krigstein picked a fight over that stupid sleeveless shirt, I felt sorry for Alex. I sided with the guy who threatened to kick my ass over Susan K. That’s how much I hated the evil Krigstein.

In the ongoing story of my silly little life, I vilify people that assign me the futile task of pushing a metaphorical boulder up the hill. So I constructed a dismissive paint-by-numbers portrait of Krigstein as a sadistic, tyrannical taskmaster. He was probably one of those embittered failed artists who wound up teaching high school after running out of options. Soon enough, I’d be done with high school. He would never be free. So screw him.

This morning I’m reading a Facebook thread about Art & Design faculty written by a bunch of former schoolmates. 34 years ago they belonged to a clique of avid comic book aficionados. Some of them achieved the dream of working in comics professionally and beyond.

I shared few of the same teachers with this crowd — I majored in illustration and then theater design (but the latter was a ploy to qualify for a high school internship at Circle Rep to jam my foot in the theater door as an aspiring actor). Anyway, when Krigstein’s name comes up in the thread I don’t immediately connect the dots. At first, the name doesn’t even ring a bell. It’s all rather foggy. Then, somebody incants that dreaded word. Scratchboard. All these memories flood back.

I’m fascinated to learn that Krigstein was actually an important artist, perhaps only known by select fans of comic book art and professionals in the field, but still an influential figure who made some groundbreaking art.

This information asks me to dust off and reframe an old story. In that reframed narrative, Krigstein doesn’t become any less of an asshole. But I become more of one.

In that state of hysterical adolescent blindness, a side effect of youthful hubris, I mistook Krigstein for a nobody with nothing valuable to teach me. And so I learned nothing in his class. In retrospect, that’s kind of sad. Worse, in the fickle flickering of irony’s harsh light, I am a 50 year old embittered failed artist living the consequences of limited options.

Yet, my father liked that bongo drummer scatchboard I made in Krigstein’s class enough to have it matted and framed. It hangs yet on the wall of his office. And it’s not the worst thing I ever made.

http://m.newyorker.com/archive/2002/07/22/020722crbo_books?currentPage=1