My stuff gets real

So if you're joining this from the last entry I posted, you would already know that we have met all the people in the group we are working with. This time we were paired up with one person each from the group of St. Christopher's patients. I was chosen to work alongside a man called Carlton.

We sat down behind one of the tables we had placed in the cabin and began to talk. He seemed almost anxious about talking to me about anything at first and I had no idea why. So after a few minutes of me talking to him I decided I would put myself in his shoes to try and get to grips with what he must have been feeling; some 17 year old kid was trying to find out everything he could about his life so he could make a doll of him. I would have been apprehensive at first as well.

However, after about 20 minutes of me trying to ask questions I levelled with him. I told him that I had spent ages writing down questions to ask him and now, after meeting him, all those questions seemed so useless because I had started to think that no amount of questioning could describe Carlton as well as he could. So I asked him, tell me about you.

I soon started to find out that this man was part of the old school generation. The kind that valued respect and common courtesy above a lot else. He had so many thoughts about, well, everything I could think of. I learnt so much in that session, like the differences between religion and god, the earth and I'm pretty sure he would hate me for saying, but his extremely keen hatred of the colour pink.

Here was a person who, when asked what clothes he wanted on the doll of himself replied, “oh nothing much really, plain white vest, plain cardigan, plain trousers and a black pair of leather shoes”. In today's society, within my group of friends, clothes kind of represent who you are and what style you are into. But to him, they were meaningless.

To be completely honest, this doll is going to be hard. Because unless you have met Carlton and actually talked to him at length about his thoughts and what means a lot to him, you would have no idea what kind of person he was. So the clothes and this doll wont really be anything special, because he doesn't want them to be, the animation that is going to be projected onto the doll's face...Well, that's where the magic is going to happen...