Bad Grades

I had a house full of little people today. One 4 year old, two 3 year olds, a 17 month old and an 8 month old. There were moments I questioned my sanity. But then I remembered that taking my 3 kids to Walmart by myself during naptime is one of the most insane ideas I've ever had and I felt much better about my afternoon.

A little coloring helped calm me as well. Does anyone else find coloring as soothing as I? I remember doing it a lot in college. And when Anna was little there was always a box of crayons on the table. Who would have thought a cylinder of colored wax could do so much. A big "Thank You" to Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith, creators of the crayon. I find it slightly amusing that it wasn't either of those men that had the creativity to come up with a name for their invention. Leave it to Ed's wife who combined the french words for chalk (craie) and oily (oleaginous) to come up with "crayon." So thank you too, Alice.

Enough with the history lesson.

One of the little girls today has a heart for coloring. She was just the right height where she could rest her chin on the table top while creating her art. I decided that she looked so content it might be in my best interest to join her.

And then I had the flashback. This happens to me literally every single time I color. No joke. Every single time I color I remember the time I got a worksheet returned to me in Kindergarten and it had this on it:




And underneath that the teacher drew this:



Why the arrows? Let me just provide you with a little clarification.
It was a coloring worksheet. Yes, a coloring worksheet.
I remember it clearly. It was a picture of an owl.
I had made wonderful color choice, but apparently I had colored like this:


And I should have colored like this:



Do you see the difference? Yeah, I had a hard time seeing it too..... IN KINDERGARTEN!!! Being the ignorant 5 year old that I was, I had colored in too many directions. Crayon strokes are supposed to be made in the same direction throughout the entirety of the picture. I changed directions too many times resulting in a big, fat, red check minus.

As you can tell, I will never forget that paper. I have a hard time remembering my high school GPA or even the grade on my high school Calculus final exam (which I'm sure was far worse than a check minus). But I kid you not, every time I sit down with a crayon in hand I will forever be taunted by those nasty little red arrows.

So, here's to you Mrs. Hay. For tainting my coloring ability for the remainder of my life, I colored you this picture today. And I threw in a few directional changes just for kicks.