I'm kinda glad the oekaki program died when I tried to resave this, cuz the timer would have been really depressing...

Drew this as a challenge at the Distant Horizon Avatar oekaki: [link] The challenge was to draw yourself as a bender and as creatively as possible. Not that I expect to win with this, but it was fun, and I've always thought it would be cool to be able to light my cigarettes like that. Yes, I do smoke, very very rarely. How rarely? When I went in for my physical and the doctor asked if I smoked, I told her how often and she said "for all medical purposes, you don't smoke." I've been smoking out of the same pack of cigarettes for over 6 months, and there's still half a pack left. Oddly enough, I think that my personality is more suited to waterbender, but let's face it, I LOOK like a firebender. XD And yes, I really do have those two freckles/moles.

So here's a little bit of random info... My father's job is studying how technology can be used in education. How to help kids learn using computers, what works, what they should learn... Of course, when I was younger, this meant that I was my dad's guinea pig. (that sounds kinda wrong....) I tested all the educational software, and my dad taught me how to type when most people were still learning to spell.

So one time he was trying to teach me how to use Turtle. Anybody remember Turtle? You had a little icon that looked like (duh) a turtle and by giving it commands in code you could make it draw geometric shapes. I was about 4 or 5 at the time, and I didn't even know what an angle was, let alone what degree the turtle needed to turn to in order to make a square. I got through two sides of a square and was suffering through the third (I seem to recall tears of frustration and lots of anger; dad was crying, I was raging) when I accidentally opened the start menu.

"Ooh, what's this?"

"That's the paint program."

"Hey look! This thing lets you draw a square without a turtle! Cool!"

"Pay attention, here, we're halfway through the square and I think you're starting to get it..."

"Dad, look at this! It has COLORS!"

"C'mon, close that and let's finish the square."

"Aww, but look. I already drew a square here. Isn't that good enough? Ooh, this one makes a circle!"

At around this point my father realized that what was important for children was not giving commands to a little turtle, but just playing around. Kids didn't need to learn the code that draws a square; what they needed was a way to be kids through computers. My dad told me he had an epiphany that day, thanks to me. Of course, that's what the eldest child does... *preens*

Anyway, I worked for hours on that thing, and by the end I had created... BOB'S TRUCKING!! It was a big moving van with the words "Bob's Trucking" on the side, and it was driving down a street at night after a rain storm. I had remembered the reflection of the street lamps, the moon, the speed lines, the water splash... Man, I was a fuckin' GENIUS. I was FIVE YEARS OLD. Anyway, Bob's Trucking became the unofficial logo for my dad's office, and lasted for years. It was passed around through email and I was told that it was even shown to the secretary of education.

What was the point of that story? Simple. It was the first oekaki.