Dear Reader,
When I decide to start a new project, I want to jump right in and get to it. I'm excited because it's easy for me to envision what it will look like when I'm done. But the thing that always interrupts my fun and brings my dream to a temporary standstill is the prep work--the preparation that I should do before I begin the project. I don't know why, but I've always found the preparation part of a project a little boring, and I desperately try to find a way to skip over it, or hurry-it-up. I've had this problem since I was a kid.
When I was in junior high school, I asked my parents if I could paint and fix up my room. (The painting part was a big concession on their part, because I wanted to paint the walls blue and green, framed with a purplish-colored trim.) The attic was my bedroom. The ceiling was flat, but the side walls slanted down to the floor and there was a cubby section with a built-in ledge, where I wanted to put cushions and matching pillows. Mom even offered to help me do the sewing, but then my dad reminded me that I had to prepare the walls before I could start painting.
Prepare the walls for painting? I argued with my dad that a good two coats of paint would cover up any rough spots on the walls, even the nail holes, but I quickly found out that it didn't. And I ignored his suggestion to tape around the framework--I discovered that I wasn't a neat painter--so the job ended up taking me twice as long as it should have. I spent a lot of time cleaning up those, “Oops, I dripped a little paint there” spots. And somehow the paint just kept going in those nail holes that never filled up, like I thought they would. But in the end the room looked perfect when I looked at it through my 12-year-old eyes. (But I bet there's probably some blue and green paint drips still visible in that room today.)
I think every kid should paint some walls when they're growing up. Parents should offer their suggestions about preparing for the job--most kids will probably ignore them like I did--but the "clean-up" will be a life lesson they'll never forget.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
Start reading this month's Penguin Classic, "The Best of Everything” by Rona Jaffe and enter to win your own copy. Go to:
http://www.supportlibrary.com/bc/v.cfm?L=drclassqqxqB1AFE3F373F3&c=CLASSICS
Recent Comments