Two Blue Lines and a Yellow Streak

When I was in elementary school, I remember loving art.

But then I got a D, which was a fraction better than an F.

Who gives a 4^th grader a D or an F? I was little and fragile, searching for ways to express myself.

At the time, I enjoyed drawing, even if my drawings weren’t what the teacher wanted, which was for us to make perfect trees, houses, ponds, clouds, and, of course, to color inside of the lines.

I didn’t have a steady hand, and it wasn’t easy for me to keep the colored pencils inside the lines.

I loved art. Who doesn’t? But some of us are artists and, well, some of us aren’t.

Still, it was art class…in elementary school.

It wasn’t a college art class.

There was no need for a D for a student who was clearly trying.

I didn’t do much better in music either.

I had trouble memorizing the music notes and my singing, well, just say that my voice is not one you want singing to you…unless you want to laugh.

I’ve gotten to the stage in life where I sing when I want to needle someone or be funny.

Any expression is still self-expression.

As the years passed in elementary school, and I struggled with art and music, I started to shrink as I saw that my best attempts weren’t meeting the standards to get even satisfactory grades.

I had trouble with handwriting as well, which was considered lazy and sloppy.

My 4^th-grade teacher “gifted” me with a year in detention, not because I was disruptive or misbehaved in class; I barely uttered a word to my classmates.

No, I spent the 4^th grade in after-school detention because my handwriting was sloppy, or what she thought, lazy.

I guess my best attempts at art weren’t enough for this particular teacher, who shall remain nameless, to give me a D in art and let it be.

She had to make life even more difficult for me.

I was the only student who sat day after day, month after month, in after-school detention, writing and rewriting assignments because she thought my penmanship was abysmal.

She might have thought I was being lazy, but that was most certainly not the case.

I couldn’t do any better.

I was the only student who was continually punished for my inability to write well enough in penmanship.

Needless to say, the Ds—just above a failure—in art and my time in detention for poor handwriting skills created in my mind a reality that I could not draw a straight line.

Regrettably, I never nurtured any artistic creativity with my hands, such as drawing, painting, or even cooking, because I absorbed the message that I could not do any of the creative arts even moderately well.

Later in my elementary school years, I focused on writing stories.

I shared my first “manuscript” with a classmate who then “promoted” it to the rest of the class.

Here was a kid (me), writing a murder mystery that included every student in the class.

I remember the mystery “book” was shared from class member to class member who had to take the single copy home, and eventually, some thirty-odd students later, it made its way back into my hands.

My handwritten scribble may have been tough to read, but the story was evidently good enough to warrant a request by my classmates that I write another one.

I recall spending the summer between 7^th and 8^th grade writing another murder mystery and having to toss countless sheets of paper in the trash because I hadn’t yet been introduced to White-Out, which would become a close friend when I went to high school.

It is amazing, when you think about it, how sometimes the dreams of children start to fade in the hands of the adults who should be encouraging rather than extinguishing them.

Later in life, I placed a small blank canvas on a miniature easel on my desk. I’d given them out as party favors to guests at a party my husband and I hosted at our home, with a note of gratitude for attending.

The little canvas sat on my desk for weeks, staring at me.

One day, I told my husband that it was time for me to paint it.

I cajoled him into walking with me to the art store to pick up a couple of colors and paintbrushes, since I didn´t have a clue and felt out of place there.

As usual, he humored me because he knew it was something I had to do, and there was no escaping it.

I didn’t paint a tree, a house, clouds, or a pond.

I didn’t even consider it.

Instead, I painted a pink-red background, two vertical, bold blue lines, and a yellow streak at the top, with my initials at the bottom.

I took back the narrative I had told myself since childhood about creative pursuits beyond writing.

Just doing it was good enough.

Who cares if I would never be a master or a mediocre painter?

The fact was that I was here, and that little canvas left my mark, just as my writing does.

I remember the 4^th-grade teacher who extinguished the drawing or painting pursuits I may have had for creative expression.

I remember the student whom I trusted to share my murder mystery, loved it, and gave a path for a deeply shy kid to meaningfully belong as a classmate in the last two years of grade school.

Some lessons take decades.

It turns out I never needed permission to pick up a paintbrush or sing.

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