Heels to Toes

Hillary is always doing crazy stuff for her college art classes...hanging mirrors from the ceiling...popping paint-filled balloons with darts...forcing me to frolic through a cotton field while she takes film shots of "movement". But this week she came home with an assignment that had her head over heels.

She was supposed to make a shoe out of paper. 

It had to "represent" her personality.

She couldn't use any tape, glue, or other adhesive.

She had to be able to WALK ACROSS THE ROOM in them.

It sounded impossible to me, but Hillary was undaunted.  She took to the challenge like a true Disney heroine, optimistically declaring that she would make a high heel shoe which would impress her teacher and be the envy of all the other lazy students making moccasins by wrapping brown paper bag around their feet.  I'm pretty sure there were bluebirds flying around with ribbon in their beaks and mice marching behind her armed with needles and thread.

She set about cutting her Cosmo into strips and rolling coils of paper into a sturdy sole.

She spent hours over the next several days, curling and coiling, planning and pleating, trying and tweaking, only to find it wasn't working and start all over again.

Her spirits flagged, but only a bit.

Like any good American, she believed with enough determination and hard work, she could spin straw into gold...or at least bend this paper to her will.

 But the due date loomed and she still had nothing but a shabby sole.

I've gotta tell ya, by this point I would have been cheating.  A little glue...a staple here and there...or maybe I would have used envelopes and claimed it wasn't MY fault if they already had glue on them and they accidentally got wet while I was cobbling and helped my shoe stick together.

But, ever obedient, Hillary hobbled on, determined to finish the assignment.  

Eventually she did prevail and made it to class with these...

I don't think Jimmy Choo is calling anytime soon.

Later, Hillary was telling her dad and me about the other student's shoes.  No one else had even attempted anything other than a flat piece of paper held on to their feet by a couple of stringy strips.  They explained it by saying things like, "I made a sandal.  It's open because I'm such an open person."

These are the kind of people who go into politics.

"And the lesson learned today is...?" I prompted.  To which Hillary replied, "Don't be an overachiever?"

"Exactly!  Sometimes you just do what it takes to get by and BS the rest until it works!" 

She laughed.  Which was kind of the point.
While I am proud of her ambition, I also know that she (like her mother) has a tendency to set impossible goals for herself, hoping to impress her teachers/friends/the world.
We both know how to make things way harder than they have to be. Sometimes pouring all your energy into the wrong thing makes your high-heel dreams turn out to be more like a ratty house slipper.
Lesson learned...
Heels or no, this college thing is keeping us both on our toes!