My Little Template

I was looking for a drafting template the other day. I was mailing in my election ballot (which as a senior citizen I'm privileged to do in lieu of standing in line at the polling place) and the little oval “box” one had to fill in with a #2 pencil seemed an easier task if I had a little oval template for the chore, since there were quite a few offices for which to vote, plus a few municipal “propositions”, including one that would allow grocery stores in my “dry” precinct to sell wines and beer and licensed restaurants to sell alcoholic beverages.

At present if one wishes to buy even the most benign bottle, one must drive into another precinct which is ‘wet’. To order a glass of wine with dinner in a restaurant in a dry precinct here in this cosmopolitan Metroplex, a private club membership card is required. At one time, one had to purchase membership cards at each restaurant! Finally some enterprising soul came up with a universal membership card for $10 a year which could be used at any restaurant in the city’s various ‘dry’ precincts. Those in the ‘wet‘ ones require no such membership.

It’s absurd beyond belief. Certain factions, though, claim that legalizing the sale of alcoholic beverages will increase the crime rate. If so, then it’s already affected, since it’s not too far to get to a ‘wet’ area and buy it. When, oh, when will it dawn on people that good judgment and behaviour cannot be legislated or regulated?

Anyway - this explains why I was even looking for a template last week! In the search, I found one that “almost” fit the little oval, but had to slide it to a second position to get the entire little box filled in - within the lines. I never was much to stay “within the lines” - so maybe that’s why I find templates such a boon.

And still I didn't fill the ovals in very evenly! But mine do have 3D curves.

My computer room/office is rather overcrowded (that is a world-class understatement!) - so that I don’t have easy access into all the various cabinets and drawers. But I have an infallible memory of where everything is - IF I could only get TO it! George was always in awe that I could go to anything in a matter of minutes and find it among what looked to him like chaos. (His chaos didn't work that way for him! haha)

So I knew I still have my old templates in the bottommost drawer of a tall skinny chest of drawers in the corner with some rolling files blocking the access to all the bottom drawers between the chest and a file cabinet. You can readily visualize why I’m not into some of those drawers often! Ah, but - if I need something - - it's "in there somewhere"!

So I rolled out the files, on top of which are various other stacked trays of papers I need to sort through and dispose of. I saw copies of my very first webpage efforts from twelve years ago and all the early guest book entries in one of those trays! Yegads!

Surely, you may be thinking, it would have been simpler to just go stand in line at the polling place. But - guess what! Today is voting day and it's been pouring rain all day!! I didn't forecast this, but I did manage to avoid having to stand out in it!!

Besides, otherwise, I wouldn't have found my little template and wouldn't be writing about it! 

Finally I was actually into the drawer full of drawing pens, inks, eraser shields, drawing pencil accessories - and building drafting templates I used when I worked at a building company. I was first hired there as a draftsperson drawing buildings. It was before either the company or I found our way into CAD programs for drafting plans and blueprints, so it was all done manually. I really loved it.

Later I loved CAD planning even more, though that was years later, and was how I drew plans for the little ranch cabin George and I designed and built all by ourselves. No wonder I loved it.

But I also used templates when I resumed quilting briefly. I'd made quilt blocks as a child - to earn my dime for the Saturday shoot-em-up at the movie theater. But I briefly took it up with great enthusiasm at one juncture after George and I married.

Templates both for quilt-block designs and for pretty stitching patterns for the actual hand quilting process came into play. The fun of that was not only using commercial templates, but making some of my own. Fun!

When the ranch became my focus, though, continuing the quilting took a back seat.

But you can see that working woth templates has been in my life on several levels.

So - to my delight and surprise, last week, rummaging in that drawer of building templates, for room features, various angles, curves, ellipses, circles and such, what to my surprise did I find but my very first-ever little fun drawing template I had as a kid!

It’s tin and the outlines are, as you can see in the picture, various shapes, both geometric and organic in essences. I used this little “toy’” ALL the time as a child, to draw things. It was like making my own coloring books and I suppose it gave me an idea of shapes, balance of shapes and helped stir my active imagination to put simple shapes together into different pictures.

I could make endless things with it!!

I'm sure I had it and played with it for years, but I know I did when I was seven, as I am in this photo.

Just for fun, I couldn't resist making a little picture using it earlier today, though I admit that my template-art skill is pretty rusty!

All the time I was playing around with this gadget from my distant past, I kept thinking about various kinds of “templates” we all use in our lives, not necessarily physical templates, but we all use some kinds of standard "shapes" of thinking about and planning our days, our work and various aspects of our lives. Even the most non-conventional person embraces some standards of non-conventionality!

So I was wondering how much influence in our lives we can trace to any particular templates we have been given or have found handy to use - and in what clever ways?

I wondered about it enough to ask what special little manual toy did you use and enjoy as a child which may have contributed to your imagination or may have stirred your creativity?

Of course - most of us have some in common: we used pencil and paper to write stories and compose verses, more than likely, which is why we have this writing connection or bond now.

Of course, different "times" have produced and are producing different kinds of stimuli for children. Some of the things now are quite stimulating, but many are so much more pre-set and less left to the child's imagination and curiosity that they may tend to stir less original ideas. But maybe that's not how it works..

In any case, I’d love to hear about any of your experiences as a child in this regard, if you woul be willing to share.