Boy's room

The night before we picked up Vincent from his father's and the first week he was home I spent time up in his room , dusting and vacuuming - belatedly getting ready for his return. When we rented this house - our first rental house - we imagined that Vincent would end up in the sprawling upper-floor room (with a full bathroom but with no exterior door). For three years we've been slowly repainting the interior walls - Stephanie is close to finishing repainting the dining room and living room. But we probably won't ever paint Vincent's room because it's got 1970s-style wood paneling. During the past year or so Vincent has been taping things up on his paneled walls - first, posters; then, Lazer Blaze printouts. Immediately above or below are "random tickets (and passes)" - movie and concert tickets and passes and badges for anime conventions he's been to.

Vincent worked on a research project on Spiderman for an English class a year or two ago- and produced a stupendous PowerPoint - and collected some of the materials posted on his south wall and pictured below in the process.

This is a painting of Florida State's Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee - which we found at Louisville's St. James Art Show - and materials related to the death of Vincent's Florida friend, Julian, who was killed in Iraq.

These are some materials we had framed and put up early on: certificates in connection with Vincent's training in Shaolin Kempo at St. Matthews Martial Arts school. Drawing on his earlier training on Tae Kwon Do and karate, Vincent quickly earned new belts. But in the past year he hasn't gotten to Kempo has much and he still has the same green belt he earned I think in 10th grade.

Around these Kempo belt certificates, Vincent has started putting ideas for movies or video games that he's written down.

In addition to the Anime convention tickets and name badges, Vincent put together in another section on his north wall a melange of Anime convention programs. (See also )

One of Vincent's favorite movies is also the favorite movie of our entertainment Bible ("Entertainment Weekly") in the past 25 years of movies. It's a movie that I wouldn't have let him see (he saw it at a friend's house) and one that I have mixed feelings about. The first time I saw this poster, it was already up where we'd once had a framed "Star Wars" poster up.

Vincent has bought a couple of beautiful Anime themed prints and we've put them up. This one is for "Yu Yu Hakusho," an Anime TV series Vincent has watched lots of.

One of the first sets of materials Vincent posted, I mentioned, were print outs from Lazer Blaze (see "Lazer Blaze/Graeters"), as I mentioned. Since then, an entire half of his east wall is devoted to these printouts. He hasn't really played more than eight or ten times - but he keeps all the printouts (although I believe he's skipped putting up printouts from days he's done poorly. Back before he left for Denmark - you'll recall - he was 1st out of fields of 30 or 40 players several times (though I don't remember what his "kill ratios" were).

I'm waiting to dust the rest of the house after Stephanie finishes painting and we move all of the stuff back to where it was before. It'll be a while before I get back to dusting and vacuuming Vincent's rooms (and cleaning his bathroom). We'll see if he finds any more personal materials to try to post and any more space to post them.

-- Perry