The bad ideas

I wrote earlier this week about making the too-big watch strap work for me, which so far looks like it will remain a success, though I'm still laughing a little at myself every time I look at the rough edge where I trimmed the strap narrower to fit.

But if that had gone horribly, it would have made it to the list of Not the Greatest Ideas, which I've been doing since as early as  first grade. Here's what I remember: My mom had bought us lunchboxes at the start of kindergarten, the square plastic ones that came with a matching thermos. Anthony's was a purple Barney lunchbox, mine was a robins egg blue Little Mermaid one. Well, come first grade, I decided that my Little Mermaid lunchbox wasn't what I wanted anymore, but I also knew it didn't make sense to ask mom for a new one when this worked just fine. So I took out a sheet of white paper and Crayola markers and drew myself a new photo; I think it was a dog or cat or something. Then I attempted to peel off the big rectangle sticker with the Little Mermaid graphic so I could replace it with my new creation. The result was what we've all faced with not-removable-friendly labels: streaks of paper that tear off, jagged lines, sticky spots.


I feel like I thought, Bad idea. Shouldn't have done that, should have left it as it was, shouldn't have tried to do things the quick way. Maybe I did, maybe I'm projecting that memory from the numerous other times I've thought the exact same thing:

• thinking I could successfully redo my doll's hair in third grade
• getting too tired of sewing so deciding to staple the remainder of my mini project in fourth grade
• cutting my own bangs in seventh grade
• making tacky two-story origami boats (a mini-summer tradition for a few years) with scotch tape while Anthony owned me because he took time to cut grooves and pieces that slid into each other
• all the times I accidentally tear a small hole in my shirt because I don't want to find scissors to cut off the price tag.

There are more embarrassing stories, but it's easier to share the ones of the past and not remark on the ones that are still happening every week even as a 23-year-old. Needless to say, "story of my life" doesn't seem like an overstatement in these cases.