The height of my artistic prowess

There’s a newly-stained bedroom dresser sitting out in my neighbor’s driveway. It has the lines of an antique, and I have no doubt that my crafty neighbor discovered it in some flea market and has now turned it into a museum-quality piece.

“Helen’s working on a project,” I tell my husband as we drive past and wave to our neighbor. “And that’s one thing I will never do again, by the way – strip and stain a piece of furniture.”

“You used to do that kind of thing all the time,” my husband notes.

“Yeah,” I reply, “and it always looked awful. Other people can strip and stain wood furniture and it looks gorgeous, but whenever I did it, I felt like I was the kid in the art class whose projects were the ones about which the teacher winced and said, ‘uh, that’s nice, good job,’ when all the time she was thinking, ‘who let this kid in here?’”

“You never took art classes in school,” my husband reminds me.

“I know. And there’s a reason for it,” I tell him.  “I am artistically challenged. I didn’t want to be the one student who was humiliated when everyone else turned in beautiful sketches, while the best I could do was a stick person.”

“But you made great sock puppets for the kids when they were little,” he pointed out.

Actually, I did. I could take any old sock, sew on two buttons for eyes and a mop of yarn for hair. My husband named it Mr. Sock and used it to tell the kids wild stories. My two younger daughters still talk about Mr. Sock almost a decade after he charmed them with bedtime tales.

“I don’t know how impressive it is that the height of my artistic skill was producing Mr. Sock,” I say.

Then again, my kids remember Mr. Sock fondly. Great art is memorable, right?

Besides, I can always ask my neighbor for help with staining, if I ever wanted to give it another go…which I don’t.

But I do have more socks in the closet if you’re in the market for a Mr. Sock. That, I can do.