Show and Tell

There was something intensely private about the way she chose her passion for the day. Passion needn’t be a specific activity but something that lit her up for the moment.

As usual she laid her day out in columns. They were not colonial but Grecian. More classic than predictable.

She often tired of the mundane so her daily passion was tossed to the winds, caught by a butterfly net then drawn from the various options as if from the hat for a charades game. Indecision is addictive but conquered with choice.

Butterflies can’t fly in the rain so the net was best suited to her daily sorting of ideas she spilled into it. What riveted her was what made her wiggle with excitement and curiosity. The joy of discovering how to foist her passion upon others was her sustenance.

Springing into life with today’s passion under her arm she headed out to paint someone with her determination to share the tiny car she’d covered with macaroni.

As Mom turned the corner slowly in the car line and moved the gear shift to park she heard the locks click open so she could bail from the purring white Volvo. She held tight to her prized passion for the day.

Running into school she saw her nemesis Sheila bouncing down the hall in full clogging regalia. She felt saddened. Her mind ran to the butterfly net. Had she picked carefully enough? Could her macaroni car hold a candle to petticoats?

She decided to sprint to the classroom so she could beat the clogging princess. Her greed caused her to trip and crash to the floor breaking her prized possession into a million tiny pieces of pasta. Dry. No cheese. No sauce.

Sheila, while slowly sauntering by, kicked a dislodged shard. Watching it skitter across the grey tiled floor from her vantage point on her belly, she knew she‘d missed her window. Their teacher greeted her rival at the door with a smile. Shelia replied with a curtsy holding her ruffled layers just so.

Eyes downcast, she had to accept the fact that she wasn’t going to be introducing her passion for today’s Show-n-Tell activity. It was shattered all over the hallway, but the car remained intact. Maybe the story of how the car became naked was the better story today. Sheila could clog, but she couldn’t tell a story.