When I was in preschool my teacher tore up my project because I colored my squirrel bright red. Our squirrels, she told us, were to be colored LIGHT BLACK.
Well, my great grandmother had told me about red squirrels and I was determined to color my squirrel red.
But my teacher ripped the sheet of paper out of my hand and crumpled it up. She did the same to the little girl next to me, who was coloring a rainbow squirrel.
And my teacher yelled at me when my painting wasn't a painting OF anything. Well, all you can do with orange is make oranges or pumpkins, and both are boring, I reasoned. So I just painted. I stretched my soul out through the dripping orange paint brush. And she ridiculed it.
Why did I take these things to heart? Why to this day am I so afraid of doing something wrong that I freeze up?
Later, much later, I write...
One of my mom's friends once said, "Why is the Devil's question." It angered me. I had always thought that asking why expressed curiosity. Sometimes it does not. Sometimes "why" is just "whyning." Now I am frequently attacked by uncontrollable giggles when presented with why questions. They are just so absurd. What is is. If you don't understand it, grow until you do, but you must let the concept defeat and engulf you; you must surrender to it. What is is. If you don't like it, change it. And if you say, "I can't," you'll never know if you could have.
Why did I take those things to heart? Because I was a child and didn't know better. Now I am grown. What does that mean? That I challenge the assumptions and values that I impose on the Universe. That I smile every time I see a red squirrel. That I cherish my imagination and nurture children's fantasies.