Imitated

When I was working full-time at an enrichment centre, I made paper fortunetellers to amuse kids who are waiting for parents to pick them up or fill out registration paperwork or whatever. Sometimes I gave them away… it was easy to make new ones and it made kids so happy.

The ones I make now are slightly different from the ones I made when I was a kid, which start off with red/green/yellow/blue and inside have something gossipy inside about who you are going to marry or whatever.

My fortunetellers have sun/moon/stars/clouds on the outside, because these all have different numbers of letters and are all things in the sky and can be depicted easily using a pen or pencil (rather than colored crayons, markers or pencils).

The ‘fortunes’ are just faces: happy, sad, angry, surprised, sleeping, bored, silly and ‘idea’ (you’re a genius!).

Even though I’m not teaching anymore, I still carry a fortune-teller in my wallet, in case I run into a child who needs to be amused… don’t laugh, it happens!

For example, when my husband and I ran into some neighbors  at Haq-Insaf’s Eating Place, I was able to amuse their young daughter. After playing with my fortuneteller, she even made one of her own!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Lots of stamps on a box. Like, really a lot.

Like, um… 54.

Wait, no, sorry—forgot to count the ones on the front.

more-stamps

…79 total.

Actually, that’s not all, either, because there’s a $5.35 sticker from the bar code machine, which could have been used for the whole amount, no? I mean, you know, I’m just saying.

I guess my in-laws really wanted to use up some stamps that were lying around. Cracks me up! This kind of thing probably also cracks up the postal workers. Possibly not in the same way.