Sean, age 3, hands this drawing to me and says, “Here is a crocodile opening its mouth and eating you. You are in the picture and those are little red dots of your blood.”
A couple weeks ago, the school librarian asked me to design a display stand and storage container for the Big Books (you know, those massive picture books meant to be read to read to a large class of antsy little ones). For the display stand, I suggested an easel that can be folded flat when not in use. I found the request to design the storage container a little puzzling though. It should really be just a big box, and so long as the builder knows the size of the biggest book, and how many we have/intend to have, I didn’t think I could offer any special insight in terms of design. I explained this, but the librarian and the builder both insisted that I make a sketch. I drew what I thought indicated a box with an open top, with dimensions that enable it to hold the books standing upright. (See drawing).
However, the builder interpreted the diagonal lines of my attempt at perspective as a request for a crooked box. And blatantly ignoring the written label, he understood the indication that the books stand upright inside the box as a request for a plank of wood serving no function whatsoever nailed to the bottom of the box. (See photo).
4 comments:
Hilarious, but you have to give him credit, he did a nice job. Next time, I expect a 3-view elevation, with a perspective view just for 'feel'. Let me know. It'll give me an excuse to get out my straight edge and compass.
We've been having a similar experience with the set-up for the program I co-lead. Every week a form is filled out where we attempt to indicate that we want 100 chair set up in several rows in a U shape or three sides of a square (we're really indifferent as to which). Every week they are in parallel lecture style rows, no U, no three-sided square. Finally I asked the person in charge of directing the group who sets up how we can achieve the desired result. He looked at the diagram we had handed in, drew three arrows through the "chairs" and wrote next to the arrows, "chairs face this way." Maybe the builder thought you wanted the functionless wood plank to say "books" on it. :-)
Whatcha doin for Thanksgiving?
I'm laughing, but, you know, it's hand-made, constructive, useful, and no threat to anyone, and so in sum, I'd call it a good day, no?
hand-made and no threat, yes. . .useful? well, it's not useless, and I don't know if you can see it in the photo but the floor of the box is also slanted. So the books slide to the front of the box or to the barrier, then they curl back on whatever is behind them. The books bend (which does not please the librarian) and then the titles get hidden so to find the book you want, you need to empty the whole box instead of just flipping through the books. And the whole thing is way bigger than it needs to be in a library that is very small. BUT the builder says he can and will fix it, so yes, a good day!
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