I Love Corey, Chapter Eighteen

We spent the rest of the morning putting things on shelves and building more shelves to put things on. God, I’d had no idea there was so much stuff when I’d bought it.

Nancy fixed lunch and when we showed her the results of the sales she finally forgave me. She insisted that I’d receive the money from any more sales. We argued about that but Nancy’s stubborn and I figured I’d lost this one. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to place things so Vern had room to work. No matter how hard we tried, there still wasn’t enough room for everything.

As Bob was coming over to give Corey another art lesson I told Vern he was going to have to solve his own problems. I had to go home and start dinner. When we left Vern was trying to figure out what he’d sell and what he’d keep. His sons were still putting things on the last shelf we had built.

Before we’d left to go to Vern’s I’d put a sirloin roast in the oven. When we walked in the house you could smell it. I knew we’d have time to clean up and finish preparing dinner before Bob showed up. Therefore we hopped into the shower and even managed to get clean somewhere along the way. It’s fun to take a shower with Corey. There’s always a lot of kissing and rubbing and feeling, things I don’t know how I got along without. Of course we each had to make sure a certain part of the others body was clean. You’d be surprised how much fun we could have with that inspection. I mean first you looked. Then tasting was considered an appropriate way for further inspection. Magnifying said part was accomplished by some stroking. Well alright, it didn’t exactly magnify the view but the growth of said part did make it much more visible. Like I said, showers are fun and the great thing is that you need at least one every day. Not only that, we both agreed they relaxed us. Well perhaps relaxed isn’t the proper word but you get the idea. It did seem to relax that certain part of our bodies. They were normally at ease and just hanging there after a shower.

After the shower we dressed and Corey retired to his room to get ready for his lesson. I returned to the kitchen and started the remaining preparations for dinner. It was going to be a rather simple dinner consisting of the roast, potatoes and gravy, a green salad, and corn. It was late enough in the year that corn on the cob was no longer as good as I would like so I was going to use some I had cut off the cob and frozen. It’s much better if you freeze your own rather than buy already frozen out of the market. The real secret is to go and pick your own and prepare it that day. Corn is one of those vegetables that need to be fresh.

I was just getting things going nicely when Bob showed up. 

“Corey’s in his room and dinner will be in about an hour” I told him while handing him a cup of coffee.

“It smells so good I may just stay here and drool.”

“Sorry” I said while laughing. “I’m not willing to try to put up with him if he doesn’t get his art fix. Get your ass down there and pound something into his feeble little brain.”

“You know, of all the students I’ve had I think he might have the most natural talent. He’s got a great eye for color and as soon as he learns a little more about perspective and how to achieve and control it he could very well turn out to be a good artist.”

“How good?”

“Sam, I don’t really know. I’m just a high school teacher and not maybe that good a one but he may very well be a great one some day. It all depends on his desire.” He seemed to be lost in thought. “One of these days I’d like to take him and some of his work to one of my friends and let him talk to him and see what he’s done. That might give us a better idea of just how good he might be.”

Now it was my turn to think. “Well Bob, I’ll leave that up to you. If you think it would help him go ahead and ask him. In the end it’s his decision. The only other thing I’ll say is I’ve got enough money to pay for what ever he needs so don’t let that hold you back.”

“If he continues to show interest I will. Guess we’ll just let it go for a while and see what he wants to do. He may decide that he’s no longer interested.” With that he took his coffee and headed for Corey’s room.

I spent the rest of the time working on dinner and thinking about what Bob had said. I’d never thought about it before but his clothes always looked nice mostly because the colors went together well. In fact with his having put on both some growth and weight I was starting to notice some of the girls in school looking at him. I guess they’re going to be disappointed. I decided that after dinner I’d have to get him to show me some of his work. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it. Maybe I could see in it what Bob saw. So far they weren’t pictures. Mostly it was just exercises trying to produce certain effects. I wondered if he had actually tried to draw anything yet or if he was still following his lessons.

Dinner turned out well. Both Corey and Bob congratulated me on it and while it may sound conceited I had to agree with them. The roast was rare in the middle, the gravy was seasoned just right and had lots of flavor, and the corn I’d frozen last fall was about as good as any I’d ever had. While the wine was very good I wished I had selected a better one as the dinner had turned out so well. The problem with that is that you get very little in improvement in wine without a tremendous increase in cost. The burgundy I’d selected normally sold for around forty dollars and was considered a bargain at that price. I’d have to go to the seventy to one hundred dollar range to get one that was a little better. 

Bob and Corey returned to Corey’s room to finish his lesson after we had eaten leaving me to clean up the kitchen. I made a fresh pot of coffee while cleaning up and when I’d finished I joined them to see what they were covering.

When I got there Bob was demonstrating with charcoal how you could bring things toward the front or push them to the back by varying how dark you made the respective items. While he had said he was only a high school teacher and he might not be a great artist, he was good at teaching and explaining. I doubted that I could have done very well at trying to draw but his explanation made it clear how shading accomplished that illusion. After all, anytime you succeed in representing depth on a flat surface it is an illusion.

Both Bob and I enjoyed a cup of the Kenyan coffee I favored and finally he finished with Corey’s lesson. After giving him his homework assignments for the next several days our conversation turned to the next lesson. Bob said he had some other appointments so next Wednesday would be the first evening he would be available. Neither Corey nor I had anything scheduled so we told him that was fine with us. With that he started to leave. On his way out I gave him a package of leftovers as Corey and I would be unable to handle the rest of the roast. While Corey had hit one of those periods when it was almost impossible to fill him up, the remaining part of the eleven pound roast would overpower even that kind of appetite. 

As soon as Bob left Corey had to tell me how much Bob had complimented him on his work on the previous assignment. I could tell he was proud of the work he had done. We sat for a time discussing his work both in art and in school, and I told him how proud I was of his efforts and accomplishments. He positively glowed under my compliments. It’s amazing how much children respond to positive expectations and reinforcements. I’ve noticed that my students always seem to do better when I can manage to convince them that they can not only do the assignments but do them well because they’re just as smart as anyone else. If you can get them to believe that, they can jump from average to way above average. If you can reinforce it enough it seems to carry through into other classes and then they just seem to bloom. boy that makes my day. As far as I’m concerned that’s what teaching is all about.