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Now I remember why I avoid chalk art projects!

In the frenzy of writing lesson plans, I swerved off onto the freeway of theory instead of following the bumpy road of experience. One might think it was a good idea to teach analogous color schemes by arranging centers with buckets of colored chalk in related color "families", stacks of black paper, and fun examples from Blue Dog Man. One might think it if one was totally relaxed in a hot tub in the mountains during a light, fluffy night snowfall while drinking excellent champagne. One might think it also if one had been procrastinating writing lesson plans all of one's impoverished winter break.

Alas, one returned to reality during the afterschool kindergarten/first grade class. One could say one got a rude awakening! When students use chalk, their hands get messy, then they touch their noses. Their faces get messy. Their clothes get messy. They start drawing on each other...They scratch whatever itches, and spelunk in body orifices...

To stop the hemorrhaging, art teachers use spray fixative. The cheapest fixative is Aqua Net hairspray, but it smells awful, and has to be used outdoors. Outdoors is the back porch, but the door locks behind anyone exiting that way. The art teacher must put a dozen kids in a line with their chalk drawings, appoint kindergarteners to hold the door open, and keep one foot in the door anyway, while spraying hairspray on the drawings.

This has the potential to be an ooh-ahh moment. The hairspray seems to eliminate the chalk drawing, but then the colors reemerge. I finish off one, then two partial cans of Aqua Net. The next can is full, but clogged. Panic is setting in. Kids are marking chalk warpaint on each other's faces, leaving marks on the wall, and making a major mess at the sink. They are in position to escape out the back door, and losing a kid is A Bad Idea. I run back to the art room for more fixative. Thank heavens there's a can of real Krylon Artist Fixative on the top shelf (well out of the reach of students and most teachers). I grab it and shake it as I run back to the porch. I spray, the chalk lines disappear, but something is different. Mildly puzzled, I spray five more drawings. The images aren't reappearing. I touch one. Sticky. Aaack! I've been spraying the drawings with Krylon Spray Adhesive, not Artist Fixative. A little "ive" is a dangerous thing. Now the drawings are blowing around and sticking to each other and to me. I'm sticking to the spray can. I'm still keeping the door open with my foot, while apologizing profusely to all the kids whose drawings I've just ruined. Meanwhile back in the art room the kids have transformed each other into Roswell aliens with the lime green chalk.

I'm pulling out my hair. It occurs to me that maybe the reason my hair always looks so weird is my inability to distinguish spray adhesive from hairspray fixative.

When my sons were little they used to play barbershop, and pretend to style my hair with all the tools in their Fisher Price workbenches. Plastic wrench, rubber screwdriver, spray adhesive, and voila! a new look for mademoiselle!