Mrs. Wilson and My Artistic Aspirations

After those disastrous first few weeks in Mrs. Wilson's class, I was ready either to go back to kindergarten or to skip first grade entirely and move on to second grade. My parents didn't seem to believe that either option was viable though. They would smile and nod and pat me on the head and send me off to bed, where dreams of Mrs. Wilson flying around on a broom would terrorize me.

On one seemingly pleasant spring day, Mrs. Wilson gave us an art assignment. "Draw a picture of your house and yard, and color it." She sketched out an example for us by drawing a bright yellow house on a dark green lawn and a deep blue sky. I remember the image clearly -- a three color world.

With my little fist clenching the crayons, I did my best to recreate my humble abode for my teacher to see. I closed my eyes so that I could more clearly picture what it really looked like.

Our house had a brick front ... but it wasn't just a red brick or a brown brick or a yellow brick ... it was sort of multi-colored. I picked out the crayons that I thought would best depict the colors of our brick house, and I went to work.

A few minutes later, voilah! I smiled to myself, knowing that Mrs. Wilson would be suitably impressed. Now for the lawn ... well, our grass wasn't just green, it was green and yellow and a little brown in places. It had some clumps here and there, and some weeds were mixed in with the flowers in the garden.

After a few minutes, there it was. I could almost feel the grass beneath my feet, it looked so perfect.

As I sat there admiring my picture, I daydreamed about my future possibilities as an artist. The next Leonardo da Vinci? Van Gogh? Maybe I could paint famous ocean scenes, or city landscapes, or ...

At that moment my daydream was interrupted when Mrs. Wilson startled me from behind with a booming, "What is this?" Before I could respond, she picked up my artwork. "Why, you have yellow and brown streaks in your grass. Grass is green. See the house and yard I drew for your example? What color is the grass?"

"Green," I mumbled.

"What? I couldn't quite hear you."

"The grass is green, Mrs. Wilson," I humbly confessed.

"Yes, exactly. Try it again." And in one motion she crumpled up the cherished drawing of my house and yard, and she handed me a blank sheet of paper. "Oh by the way," she added, "You have two minutes to complete the assignment."

Two minutes. I guess I lived in a three color world too. When she said, "Time's up," I had just put the last stroke of yellow on the yellow house. There it was ... a yellow house on a green lawn under a blue sky. Why hadn't I done that in the first place?

The coup de grace came at the end of the day when Mrs. Wilson said to the class, "Be sure to show your parents the drawing of your house."

I trudged toward home. Tears welled up as I drew nearer and nearer to our front sidewalk.

How was I going to explain to Mom and Dad that this is my drawing of our house ... a yellow house on a green lawn under a blue sky? That wasn't our house or yard. Or sky.

I walked home, slowly.

I walked home, defeated.