Project 2 : Narrative 1 : Rules

Dots should work just fine. This thought occurred to me as I prepared the new bottle of Elmer’s glue for my first Kindergarten project. Sitting in front of me was a poem about flowers that had just been cut into a circle with my butter-knife sharp scissors. The poem was to be glued to the center of a bright red piece of construction paper that had been cut into the shape of a flower.

My classmates and I all sat patiently with our newly cut circles and glue bottles in hand, awaiting the rules for the gluing step. My past experiences with gluing projects proved to make me an expert and I required no such rules. I decided to proceed with this next task in the project. Very carefully I flipped over the piece of paper with the poem and began to put little subtle dots of glue over the surface. I didn’t want to create too much of a mess because some of my other projects ended with a gooey disaster.

“What do you think you are doing?” snapped Ms Boxterman looming high above me. She startled me so much that it caused me to squeeze a little too hard on the bottle and suddenly my paper circle had a pool of glue covering it. My classmates oooed with excitement over someone getting in trouble.

“Becky, I did not tell you to begin, you were supposed to wait for the rules. Dots are not how you use glue. You were to create lines on the red flower and then smooth them out. Now you have created a mess.” I was then told to clean up my mess and go wait in the corner while the others finished their floral masterpieces. Sitting alone in the bright red chair facing the wall, tears ran down my face having learned my first rule of design. Lines, not dots, is how glue is to be used.