Lost Art

My sister Songbird's oldest, D-Money started third grade last week. For some reason it seems as though he's aged years in the last seven days. He seems different, more mature. I don't really know why or where that thought came from but I can't escape it.

Tonight one of his homework assignments was to get all of his books covered. Third grade is the first year they do this at his school. What I learned last week as Songbird was scrambling to buy everything on the required supplies list is that they now have stretchable fabric book covers for sale at Walmart. It's a designer sleeve of man-made materials that you slip around your book.

One of his books is workbook style and wouldn't work well with the taught material being slung over it. The covers were bending and folding amid the tension. As he started to panic I told him not to worry, a grocery bag will take care of it. He got lost in his confusion but told me he'd trust me.

The coolness of the Nascar or Spiderman fabric covers lasted about 10 seconds with me when I realized what he's lost by going the purchased fabric-style route. He's lost the potential destiny of being the next local graffiti artist since the ink would surely seep through those fabric jobbies and onto the cover itself thus negating the purpose of the cover altogether.

Then of course I realized that the fabric would have never stood up to my dropping my books into the bottom of my locker. The metal latch would sure have caught, snagged and ripped them to shreds.

So, for the flexible covered book, we outfitted him with the standard paper grocery bag cover and within 3 minutes he had already begun to doodle on it.