How David Soo’s theft destroyed our friendship.
Growing up, I attended a small private school across the river from New York City. It had begun as just a primary school, started by parents and based on the experimental work of Maria Montessori. As their children got older, the parents expanded the school to offer education through eighth grade, and later through high school. The name of this school was the Center for Open Education, and I attended from third through twelfth grades.
The grade school had just fifty children, the junior-high added just another thirty, and when the high school opened, it added another hundred students. Those who attended were there for various reasons. Some because of their parents’ belief in alternative education. I was there because I needed help to overcome the learning delays caused by my autism.
One challenge of being a student at the Center was the small peer group. Each student was affected by the behaviors of everyone else there, just as they would be in a family. As an autistic person, I was bullied by another student in junior high school, just as I was bullied by my brother at home. When I got to high school, the number of students to be friends with was small. This became worse during my junior and senior years, where the school shrank from a hundred, to sixty, to less than forty students before closing.
One student was someone I went to school with from the time I entered through graduation, his name was David Soo. The art program at the school was good, and it offered ceramics, both in junior high and high school. Because of this program, both David and I became skilled throwing pots on the wheel and doing sculpture. Working with clay was something I had done with my grandmother growing up, and I enjoyed throwing pots on her wheel in the basement of her home.
During those years, David and I became closer, and I considered him my best friend. We rode skateboards and bicycles together, spent time at each other’s homes, and did ceramics together. After our senior year of high school, we set up a ceramic studio in the basement of David’s parent’s home. We got a ceramic kiln from the high school when it closed, and I brought my grandmother’s ceramic wheel from her home and purchased supplies for our studio.
In the year I took off between high school and college, my mother, and a friend of hers helped David assemble a portfolio of his artwork, and he was accepted into a college respected for its ceramic program. His father and I drove my car up to that school, so David could see their studios.
At the end of that year I went to college, and before I left I asked David about getting my grandmother’s pottery wheel back. He said he needed it to continue doing ceramic work and making money. I trusted him, and left it at his house. While I was away, I was too busy with school and my girlfriend to stay in touch with David, but since we had known each other so long, I was sure we would be back in touch.
During that year, my grandmother asked me about her ceramic wheel, and I told her that it was still at David’s. When I told her that, she said that I would never get it back. But I defended David, telling her he was a friend of mine and I trusted him. We had that conversation several times, but she would always end it saying her wheel was gone.
When I came back that next summer, I called David to ask how he was doing, and about my grandmother’s ceramic wheel. He told me the wheel had broken and couldn’t be repaired. He made up a story about it having a left hand threaded shaft that couldn’t be replaced. That wheel had no such shaft. That was a lie. He said that he had put it out on the curb as garbage, also, likely a lie. He called it, “Just a lump of steel.”
I asked about the rest of my supplies, and he told me he sold them to a man in North Carolina. I asked him how I could get them back. He said that the man would go crazy if called him. I asked him about the money he got, and he said he would, “throw me a hundred dollars” if I wanted. What I wanted was my grandmother’s ceramic wheel back. He probably sold the wheel, like he said he sold my other supplies, or maybe kept them for himself. If he wanted to return them, he knew how to reach me.
Finishing that phone call, I knew I had lost my grandmother’s wheel, and her trust. And because of what he did, I had also lost David Soo as a lifelong friend. Years later, when my brother got married, his best man was his friend from high school. I have no best friend from high school. David’s theft had ended that. I later learned that David had gotten thrown out of college as a result of stealing their equipment.
Now, more than forty years later, I treated myself to spend an afternoon in a local ceramic studio. It felt good to work on the wheel again. Other people who saw my skill were impressed, but I felt sad. The pots I threw looked like the ones I’d made in high school, so many years before. Since I didn’t have a wheel, my art had not progressed.
This year I’ve met a woman who wants to learn ceramics, and this past week I’ve purchased another pottery wheel. Finding this wheel online, we drove hours to pick it up, and I paid hundreds of dollars to replace the one David had stolen from me. After our drive, I spent the next day in bed, again upset from what had happened decades before. Even so many years later, I consider David’s betrayal one of the worst in my life. I wonder how many other people have been ripped off by David Soo since.
Links to David Soo’s Ceramics:
https://www.facebook.com/DavidSooArt/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tc7KDQN76Y
https://textilesocietyofamerica.org/community/events/encounter-pat-hickman-david-soo
https://web.archive.org/web/20210122003009/https://www.davidsoo.net/