Monday, March 18, 2013

scintilla: day 4


Prompt: What talent do you have that your usual blog readers don’t know about? Talk about a time when you showed it to its best advantage.

After perusing the past couple of days of Scintilla prompts, I’ve decided to respond to this one today. It’s not my best, but, well, it’s something:

I wouldn’t call it a talent, no. But I can draw well enough to entertain small children. I used to looooove drawing and coloring when I was a kid, and one of my specialties were my “Froglets” – basically cartoony frogs with big eyes and even bigger eyelashes, usually wearing princess dresses. My artistic talent stalled out by about sixth grade –I would say that’s my level of ability - but I must say that I truly enjoy sitting down with Jane to color, which she does non-stop. Something about the quiet activity and the smell of fresh crayons puts me in a happy place.
The time this “talent”worked to my advantage in a big way was a couple of years ago when Greg, Jane and I were driving to New Jersey to visit friends. While trapped in the everlasting CT-to-NJ traffic snarl, using one of those Magna Doodle erasable things, I became Jane’s personal artist, drawing for at least an hour straight as she flung suggestions/demands at me from the back seat. Dogs, trees, houses, Daddy, rainbows – I did it all. And when you’re trapped in the car with a fidgety toddler for a three-hour trip, you thank your lucky stars that you spent all your time in elementary school with your blank paper, markers and crayons.

Note: I'm number the Scintilla days in my post titles by how many days I've personally participated. Just keeping track of my own participation.

2 comments:

Bibliomama said...

Well that makes a lot more sense than what I keep doing, which is titling them "Scintilla Day 3 on Day 5, Shut up!". I can't draw to save my life. My friend's little boy once said to his mother in amazement, "I can draw a better dinosaur than Allison!" And he could. And his dinosaur sucked. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

I've never considered myself an artist, but in the last year or so I've realized I'm quite the cartoonist. It's funny how these talents sneak up on us and come out to play when they're most needed.