REM Award Honorees (2017) —
Eric Ewing (Waterville Creates!)
“You can't play computer games all day,” said Eric's wife, Pam. “You'll get deep-vein thrombosis.”
Eric fumbled at the keyboard as his opponents on the screen (controlled by actual humans somewhere in the world, probably a third of Eric's age) trounced him soundly. He pushed the mouse away and looked up.
“Aw, I get up once in a while. I mean, you have to leave the house to play Ingress or Pokemon Go on your phone.”
Eric had been retired for a couple of years now. He got his BS in Orono and his MBA right here in Waterville at Thomas. After decades of work in factories and offices, many of these in Massachusetts, dual water-cooled EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 video cards and Samsung M.2 SSD's proved to be just the right recipe for hours of entertainment.
But still, Eric thought, Pam may be right. Many of these hours of entertainment were, in fact, consecutive. He looked at the empty breakfast bowl beside him, right where he set it down seven hours before. With no kids, no boss, no yard work, and a tendency toward introversion, what else motivates a person with a hard rule of “No heroin addiction before age 75”? He put his right hand back on the mouse, just for comfort.
“I guess I could go out. I just don't want to drive anywhere.” He thought of his two-hour commutes in traffic on Route 128 in MA (and yeah, the “in traffic” is redundant) and shuddered.
"Well," Pam offered, "You always slow down past the windows of Common Street Arts when you walk to Universal Bread. They're probably looking for volunteers.”
In microseconds after Eric hit the search button, the 1080s (in SLI, of course) quickly showed the CSA web page. There was an email address for volunteers. Could it be this easy?
And the rest is history.
Waterville Creates! is proud to honor Eric Ewing for all his great help at Common Street Arts!
To learn more about Waterville Creates!, please visit its website.