6° of Drafting Table

Twenty years ago (okay, maybe a year or two more than twenty years ago) a bunch of friends and I would go to a local club every Thursday for “alternative night.” To be honest, the main reason we went was to hang out together, as the DJ was pretty lackluster and his choice of music quite ho-hum. One of my friends, Peter, brought along a pal from university, Jay. Great guy and we ended up having a fascinating conversation. Afterward Peter gave us a ride home. Jay lived up in the northwest end of town, so we went there first.

When I started out in this whole crazy graphic art field, one of my first gigs was doing mechanical art for a fella named Jody. He was doing T-shirts for various fraternities, sororities, residences, etc. at the local university. I had already been using Macs for a few years, and used them at my day job, but I wasn’t able to afford one myself at that point. At home it was still drafting pens and french curves.

When Jody came by and saw the makeshift set up I was using, he offered to get me a proper drafting table as partial payment for the work I was doing for him. Sure.

He called me up on Sunday and said he had a line on a good one. Said he’d come by that evening and we could go and have a look at it. He picked me up and I read the classified ad as we drove. Sounded very good indeed. We ended up in the northwest part of town, driving down the same road we had driven down on Thursday night, and eventually at the same cul-de-sac we had dropped Jay off in. Okay, this is weird. Jody checked the address and we started walking towards a house, go around to the back, and Jay opened the door. Wow this is really weird.

So a guy I had met a few days before, ended up being the person that was selling a drafting table. Odd coincidences abound.