Following the Directions

I've never been very good at following the directions or coloring between the lines. I remember one time in particular, in the second grade, the coloring assignment was a dancing bear. The directions said to color the bear brown and his hat green.

Now green is a perfectly fine color but brown, let's face it, is boring. So I glammed my bear up a bit. Using my yellow crayon I gave him a sunshiny undercoat, then I stroked brown lines over the yellow to look like fur. I put a little red and orange in highlight areas and a little black where I thought the shadows would fall. My bear looked fine. He was the best looking bear in the whole class.

I got an F. "Failure to follow directions."

I tried logic on her, "But it looks brown"

Appealing to her sense of esthetics (though she obviously had none), "He looks prettier and realer."

The facts, "He's mostly brown."

The teacher was a philistine.

Now that I'm chronologically a grown-up, I can do it my way if I want to.

To heck with the philistines