Paperwork in Green

It's late. It's time for him to go to bed. Before he goes into his room, he runs back out to the living room and shuffles thru his backpack.

He comes running into the study. Here, he says, holding a sheet of paper toward me.

His gestures and facial expression say, You need to sign this for me, because I have to turn it in tomorrow. He doesn't need to say anything.

It's pretty much up to him to make sure such things get done. I am not now, nor have I ever been good with deadlines or paperwork. Paperwork with deadlines is doomed if it ever gets set on my desk. It will disappear. And I think he's almost figured this out.

Here, he said, holding the sheet toward me.

I took my hands of the keyboard and turned to the colored-pens drawer to my right.

One of the marvels of a "colored-pens drawer" is that you never have to sign your child's paperwork in the same color twice. I figure it's the least I can't do for the teachers and staff that have to read this stuff.

I selected a lime-green gel-pen. And I wrote, Please excuse Ben from 7th period ...

I wrote a several paragraphs with looping letters that only a gel-pen can produce. And I signed my name at the end with a swirling D and a trailing tail.

I handed the sheet back.

Wow, he said. That was kind of like an essay.

In lime-green!

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