Highlighting My Shortcomings

Awhile ago when I was at the grocery store, I bought some chalk for Cubby.  We have a lot of stone and concrete patios and walkways around the house, so I figured he could draw to his heart's content outside.  That way I get to sit still for a five-minute stretch and he gets to draw without constant admonitions from me that crayons/pens/pencils are only for use on the paper.  No, Cubby, not that paper; that's a book.  That's a magazine.  Those are Grandma's work papers.  THIS PAPER HERE.  ONLY THIS.

It's not good for the budding artist within, I'm sure.  So freedom to create via chalk. Sounds good to me.  Except he doesn't really want to draw by himself, mostly because he, uh, can't.  Like, at all.  Instead he hands me the chalk and makes a series of increasingly difficult demands for drawings, using the incorrect pronoun because he does that.

So it goes like this:  "I draw boats."  Meaning "YOU draw a boat, Mommy." And I draw a really pathetic-looking boat, because I cannot, in actual fact, draw worth a damn.  Then he continues with, "I draw propeller on boat."  And I draw something that kind of resembles a propeller if you squint and ingest large quantities of alcohol before viewing.  "I draw steering wheel."  Okay, that I can manage.

And then he hits me with something like, "I draw gears."  Uh.  Or "I draw motors."

Right.  I don't even know what a motor actually looks like or what might be in it, much less have any confidence in my ability to reproduce it with a piece of chalk.  At about that time I tell him Mommy is done with drawing and now Cubby can draw.

I should've worked harder in my middle school art class.  It would have been way more useful than algebra.