My daughter came home yesterday with her 4th-grade Greek goddess assignment. She's really excited to be Artemis, goddess of the hunt. She’ll get to do all kinds of cool things over the next month—like tell Artemis stories. In her gorgeous, historically accurate, homemade goddess costume. This is the moment I‘ve been dreading for years. We got a four-page handout on how to make the goddess outfit. Let me put this bluntly: I suck at sewing. I mean, I really suck. I got a "Fair –" (that’s "Fair minus") in sewing class because I basted my patchwork tote bag inside out. Did I mention we’re also supposed to make props?
Here’s a homemade sonnet instead:
Shall I compare this to a bed of nails?
It is more painful and more treacherous:
Rough judgment fuels my fear that I shall fail,
My crappy crafts are all too infamous.
A bed of nails tortures all at once;
Pin cushions mark a thousand tiny deaths.
And every stitch reminds me I’m a dunce,
Since when I basted backwards in home ec.
While other daughters shall be draped divine,
Mine will be a clothespin goddess tripping;
And where they shall have props homemade and fine,
She will hold a bow of duct tape ripping.
O, how will I fend off her tears of brine?
Screw it. I’ll just buy the things online.
This. Is brilliant. I, too, hate and despise (which may have something to do with the fact that I blow chunks at them). This could be a problem when I was in charge of museum education programs; among my suggestions for camp week were Make-Your-Own-Hairshirt Day, a necromancy workshop, and a Lindisfarne re-enactment in which half the kids would spend all week drawing pretty pictures, and then on Friday the other half would run in and destroy them all. Oddly, none of these met with approval. (We did make them build the Spanish Armada out of popsicle sticks, though!)
ReplyDelete