His Best: A couple of weeks later he showed up with
a small portable potter's wheel, about 25 pounds of
clay (that's not a lot of clay), and absolutely no
instruction. He set it up in a large garage-type room
(complete with garage door) in a separate room in the same wing as the art class and invited me and three other "interested" parties to give it a try. With no help or supervision whatsoever. I tried over and over, with no real idea of where to begin: how much clay to start with? How much water? How fast does the wheel need to go? I had worked with clay for several years before this, but never had the opportunity to learn the first thing about throwing on a potter's wheel. I quickly got very frustrated trying to teach myself something that is, I think, nearly impossible to learn alone. The other three kids didn't seem to have any real input or interest. They took the opportunity to smoke lots of cigarettes by the garage door (it had a big crack under it, so no one would ever notice) while they rocked out to Nirvana on a Walkman turned up really loud. I should have told the teacher. He would have loved to
have joined them.