Nina In New York: What I Did On My Summer Vacation (Homework, Again)

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

Remember when you were a kid and your teacher assigned you some big project involving lots of oak tag and stickers and magic markers and — if your mom was really in a generous mood — glitter glue? And it seemed daunting but when you got into it, you were so into it. You were a whirling dervish of creativity, sketching characters and drawing up intricate laws for your imagined world, and ain't nobody going to stop you once you got your hands on some Elmer's paste and a bag of cotton balls. By the time of the project's deadline and the day of the big classroom reveal, you could barely contain your excitement. You'd worked so hard! Okay, so the blue marker started running out towards the horizon line, and one of your clay men got a little thumbprint-y. But you made a pretty decent looking boat out of toothpicks, and look! The sun is made out of SEQUINS. Sequins, you guys. Your teacher is going to absolutely die. Who knows? Maybe she'll be so impressed that she'll show it to the other teachers, and maybe they'll alert the principal, and then maybe he'll hang it in the front lobby of the school and a famous actor and/or British prince who is passing through will see it and demand to know who made it and then you will be whisked off into the life of stardom and greatness you know you've got coming.

And then the parade of rolled up posters unfurl, and you were crestfallen. Your masterpiece suddenly looked like an 8-year-old made it, because she did. Unfortunately, it was now lined up next to several projects which appeared to have been done by some sort of hired graphic artist. The letters were perfectly stenciled and level, and colored in vividly and evenly. The stickers were of the highest quality, the textures were mesmerizing, and were those birds' wings actually flapping in the wind? Where was that wind coming from, anyway? WAIT A MINUTE. Was that . . . puff paint? Okay, you smelled a rat. No, worse. You smelled . . . parental intervention.

As a child, nothing infuriated me more. While I, the offspring of two highly principled people who also hated arts and crafts and valued their own free time, was forced to toil over my own work, I was made to look a fool beside those lucky ducks whose moms would rather just do it themselves than listen to their children whine. Now, as a parent, I fully intend to expose my own progeny to the same injustice. It is, unfortunately, the way of the world.

Only, something new is happening. My daughter is enrolled in a toddler program this fall, for children aged two. It's a school setting, to be sure, and they do things like story time and free play and clean up and snack and music. But you know, they're two. Most of them are still in diapers. Half of them can't speak intelligibly. And yet, over the summer, we parents were supposed to receive a blank board book which was to be filled with facts, photos and illustrations about our children. Their interests, their summer activities, their favorite things. The books will ostensibly be presented in class during the first week and then housed in the school's library. This is all a lovely idea, if our children were old enough to form linear thoughts. My kid throws four stickers on a page, puts the rest on her shirt and face, scribbles a few circles and calls it a day. If you ask her to tell you something about herself, it will be different every time.

"What's your favorite color?" Purple.

"What's your favorite color?" Green!

"What's your favorite color?" MOMMY POO POO BLUE HAHAHAHAHA I SAID MOMMY POO POO BLUE!

So, without having to think too hard about this, it's pretty clear that the parents were given a summer homework assignment. And now I have to do it too, because I can't be the one a-hole mom who abstains on some tenuous principle about age-appropriate assignments and doing your own work and I JUST DON'T WANNA. Plus, I've never missed an assignment and I'm not about to start. Unfortunately, despite my parents' insistence on my doing things myself, my artistic abilities never really progressed beyond the elementary school level. This is something with which I've long been at peace, until now. Now I find myself back where I began, lo these many decades, faced with a crafts project and the knowledge that mine is going to look like an 8-year-old made it, while everyone else's are going to look like their moms did it for them. Which they did. Only we're the moms now, and they're making us do it.

I wonder what my mom is up to this week. I'd say she owes me a few puff paint jobs.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!