>Flower Child
>As a kindergartner, my daughter brings home all kinds of art projects in her backpack each week. I keep the best of her handwriting samples, the colored drawings of flowers and ants and family members, the paper plates decorated to resemble cats, and the Popsicle stick projects. Punky’s teacher claims she doesn’t have a creative bone in her body, but it’s obvious by what my daughter brings home that she tries to be crafty. And I appreciate that.
Or at least I did until this came home.
The irony of the situation is that I actually helped cut out these flowers for the teacher on one of my classroom volunteer days. “They’re going to be so cute!” she told me excitedly. “We’re going to take pictures of each child and put their heads at the top of the flower and then we’re going to put them all out in the hallway!”
Somehow, I didn’t have this in mind when I visualized the end result…
Why does my daughter appear to be in an opium haze?
And where is her mouth?!
“It looks like she’s in a drug coma,” my husband remarked when I showed him the flower after he’d gotten home for work.
“Where is her mouth?!” I screeched.
“It’s because we’re being bornded!” Punky said, watching our discussion with interest.
“What?”
“We’re being bornded out of the flowers!” she said. “That’s why you can’t see my mouth!”
Obviously, I didn’t want to say anything to Punky to hurt her feelings, but unless this was supposed to be a zombie birth? I wasn’t buying it.
As if to confirm my dark suspicions, the next afternoon a classmate’s artwork was accidentally sent home in Punky’s backpack. Included was his flower- and his bright, shiny, smiling photograph gaily glued to the top.
Mouth and all.
I can only assume that this flower is some kind of warning from the teacher. I’ve been a little slacky in the classroom volunteer department these last few weeks, I’ll admit. And since homework has been optional since the flood, I haven’t made Punky do it. I am totally opposed to homework for kindergartners, which is another story for another post.
But you’d better believe I’m going to clean up my act now.
I don’t want Punky to be remembered as the Lindsay Lohan of kindergarten pictures.
