The coolest aspect about my summer art class is that since I'm officially the "old woman" of the group, 7th graders make me friendship bracelets and beg me to trade whatever silly band I decide to sport that day.
My brother, sister, and I are all signed up for this art class, which is to say, a beginner's course introducing different styles and techniques. It's an absolute blast. The fact that I can mingle with elementary and middle-schoolers just means more writing material.
One girl, Abby, is officially devastated that I will not be attending next week's session because I'll be in Virginia, so she vowed to have me a friendship bracelet made by the time I get back. She gave me two of her prized silly bands and gave me a hug at the end of today's class that probably means we'll be BFFs by the end of the summer. Oh man.
As we hovered over our boards, each trying to be exact and precise about the scales on our fish, we conversed about her college-aged sisters and her family's uh-mae-zing lake house in New York. She wants to be an artist when she grows up. I told her I want to be a writer when I grow up.
We slurped down two crayon-shaped popcicles without dripping on our papers, and after 2.5 hours, we'd managed to cover more topics in conversation than most of my friends and I can cover in a week's worth of time.
With every word that popped out of her mouth, I tried to imagine myself again at her age but could not seem to conjure my 13 year old self. It's nice, every once in a while, to be reminded of the days when all I needed to care about were battle wounds from riding my bike and which outfit I wanted to wear the next day.
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