TheBanyanTree: paper pants

[Julie Anna Teague]

You have to know my son.  He's a quirky, creative kid with a stubborn
streak that beats all.  If he is hell bent on something, he is heads down
and heels planted.  He has an amazing knack for envisioning the end result
he wants and making it manifest.  This is something I struggle with all
the time--making things happen by believing in myself, in my creative
vision, in my abilities.  At thirteen he does it with the greatest of
ease.  At times, feeling tired and uncreative and picturing only the mess
we'll have to clean up, I put up obstacles of disbelief in his path, only
to be eventually mown over by this kid who has no time for disbelief.  I
should know better by now.  If Andy wants to make paper pants, paper pants
it is. 

Yes, he gets hell bent on the strangest things sometimes.  We were in my
mother's basement going through piles of wallpaper samples she had
scavenged for crafting potential.  We are all pretty big on making things
in this family and a pile of odd and colorful and ugly and artsy wallpaper
samples was exciting stuff.  Andy poked through them, came up with some
odd plaids, and announced that he was going to make paper pants.  "And
THIS," he flourished a seashell border print around, "will go right across
the butt!"  

We laughed, thinking he was joking.  He was dead serious.  We asked why in
the world he would want to make paper pants.  There are questions like
this which really don't have good solid answers.  We asked him how he
planned on making these paper pants.  We told him it likely would not work
well.  And it would ruin the sewing machine.  And it was just a plain
weird idea.  And couldn't he just stick with the plan of making greeting
cards and collages, etc.  Things one makes out of paper.  Flat things.  My
mom and I, practical adults, were stuck in impossiblity.  We were not
getting the vision.  My mom just sort of humored him and laughed it off
because we were going home with our paper samples, and, frankly, she knew
the paper pants would be my problem.

I know my son, the visionary, well.  I know this kid, who never finds an
idea too weird or outrageous to contemplate, like I know the back of my
own hand.  I could tell by the look in his eye that the paper pants plan
was not going to just go away.  An hour later, he had worn me down,
convinced me that making paper pants was it's own reward, and we were
digging out the sewing machine and an old pattern for boxer shorts.
Forty-five minutes later we had a pair of paper pants with a string in the
waist for keeping them on.  He tried them on and they fit pretty well. 
Each quarter was a different plaid wallpaper.  He cut out a seashell to
add to the back, glued it on, and wrote on it in big black letters: I told
you so.
 

Julie