THE GREAT GADFLY:

Outside The Lines

It's a cold, dreary Chicago spring day and I'm sitting in a large office full of flourescent lights and institutional carpeting. Something deep and primitive in me is begging for a paste pot and a tiny pair of snub-nose scissors. And construction paper - don't be stingy with the red sheets, either. And pipe cleaners. The sparkly ones. And several tubes of glitter. And paper plates with which to make masks. And big, fat crayons.

And hey, now I can finally ask: if it was so gross to eat paste in art class, WHY did they make it mint-flavored? It was MINTY. IF YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO PUT SOMETHING IN YOUR MOUTH, THEY SHOULDN'T MAKE IT MINTY. Give it an anal flavor, or the taste of sick. But not minty! That's all I'm saying. My inner child is a fraction less angry now that I got that off my chest.

Today's weather is absolutely MEANT for cutting construction paper with dull scissors and making paper turkeys for Granny's front window. I want to make some paper turkeys today. They don't allow that kind of thing at the law firm where I work. I looked it up in the employee manual. Making paper turkeys is frowned upon, as are fabrics meant to imitate denim. You can get fired here for wearing red shoes on a Thursday.

I wonder, if I went out on my break and bought a bag of craft pasta and some little boxes, if I'd get in trouble for making little toy cellphones at my desk? I'd sure like to spend my rush hour commute home this afternoon fooling people by chatting into my make-believe pasta-cellphone. Nobody ever lets me have a bit of fun anymore, ever.

I guess I'll just have to content myself with engaging in some stapler art on the down-low, or else hope it gets sunny enough to curb my creative urges. I once made a teddy bear out of nothing but staples and a legal pad. It wasn't very cuddly at first, but it became a little more pliant when I moistened it a bit with my flat Diet Coke that was sitting around from the day before. But it was soggy - a soggy teddy.

I never trusted kids who brought MUCILAGE to class instead of a paste pot, or at LEAST Elmer's Glue. That stuff looked too scientific, man. It was skeevy. I wouldn't want my kids playing with anything amber-colored that required a rubber applicator tip, no sir.

And I blame "Lefty" scissors for the fact that I do everything with my left hand except use scissors. YOU try using those things. Unless you're a giant beetle, it's impossible. Using those scissors as a child made me know what it felt like to be right handed. It's a cold, scary world in which you people live. It's cool, though - some of my best friends are right-handed, and I just treat them like anyone else.

Stupid Lefty scissors, anyway.

I remember when I was a wee kid and my bible study class had a contest with the first prize being a giant icicle full of Reese's cups. Said "icicle" was just some candy wrapped in a 6-foot tall tin-foil dingleberry hanging from the ceiling by a couple of pieces of duct tape, but we were all simply agog. Maybe I can make some of those here at work and hang them from the windows. I could fill the icicles with Diet Cokes and staplers. I think my co-workers would go for that, it would get them going.

Oh.

The right side of my brain needs a tingle.