Coloring with my daughter is a little like coloring in a North Korean prison. She doles out the markers you are to use and marks your pages indicating where each color belongs. She hands me one marker at a time, only after she has tested the color to see if she likes it, saying “we can share”. Little Kim Jung Il comes over to check on my progress periodically and shakes her head at my inability to stay in the lines. She is clearly disappointed in my artistic abilities. This is nothing new. She once got very upset with me because I didn’t draw Velma’s arms correctly when I tried to help her finish a drawing. She doesn’t quite understand that not everyone can draw like her Dad. She legitimately thought that I was drawing badly just to mess up her masterpiece. But I color on. At least today I have a page with outlines to follow. I do my best to stay in the lines and color right to the places where the other color begins. But then I think, wait, normal hair would kind of transition from one color to the next, I should overlap the colors where they meet to make them blend a little better. This is not a wise idea while under the eye of the little dictator. I am quickly punished by the loss of all hair colors and told to work on the leaves. She says “they are all green, here’s a marker for you”. She quickly pulls all other colors out of my reach and leaves me to color dozens of tiny leaves with my giant green marker. Within a few minutes she finishes her own coloring and comes over to check on my progress. With a little flip of her hair she says “it’s okay Mommy, I can fix it”. She pulls out all of the markers and gets working on the hair right away. Within minutes she sends me off to retrieve her a snack. I’m not sure what she is going to do with me once she can reach the bowls for herself.
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