He Was Nuts About Her

Hi Everyone,

For all the fellas out there who think you've got the number one wingman, think again.
Meet Waldo. He's a walnut and I reckon his success rate is higher than your average wingman's.

I'll be posting an update with our metamorphosis unit sometime later this week, but today, I'm feeling rather whimsically nostalgic. In grad school, one of the classes we were required to take was a course on incorporating art into our pedagogy. Needless to say, this was one of my favorite quarters during my M. Ed. methods coursework taught by one of my favorite professors on the staff.  There was one project in particular that really roused my creativity and made a memorable and lasting impression on my otherwise somewhat forgetful and unimpressionable memory. Well, today also just so happens to mark the eve of my one year dating anniversary with my current beau. You might be wondering what an art project I was assigned in grad school has to do with me celebrating a wonderful year with my boyfriend right? Allow me to share yet another version of boy meets girl.

The art project was titled "Know Your Nut" and these were the directions:

On the first day of class you will receive a nut. You are to keep this nut with you at all times. You may not physically alter your nut in any way. However, you are encouraged to interact with your nut and get to know it well. Purchase a small sketch journal in which to do your daily nut assignments.

In typical "me" fashion, I loosely interpreted the last direction and opted to use Instagram as the platform for completing my daily assignments while infusing elements of sketch work so that I would have all my bases covered. I knew my professor wasn't going to argue with my decision to forgo purchasing a sketch journal but I still wanted to respect and maintain the integrity of her assignment. I'm a people pleaser at heart, sue me.

The project lasted for 21 days but it started a relationship that would go on to last much longer. Here's my project in it's entirety:

Day 1 - Draw your nut with your non-dominant hand.

Day 2 - Use your nut to create a pattern.

Day 3 - Figure out how much your nut weighs. Use pictures and words to describe how you did it.

Day 4 - Draw your nut from 3 different perspectives. Label each view.

Day 5 - Measure your nut in as many ways as possible. Draw and label each measurement.

Day 6 - Draw your nut at a social event with other nuts. (My personal favorite!)

Day 7 - Draw your nut continuously for 15 minutes.

Day 8 - Draw Something your nut. (Remember when Draw Something was popular?)

Day 9 - Draw your nut as a cartoon/comic strip/superhero.

Day 10 - Draw your nut in an outdoor environment. (Watching a Packers game at Lambeau Stadium while wearing my foam cheesehead is on my bucket list.)

Day 11 - Draw you nut using a specific art style. (I chose Pop Art and it was a lot harder to do on Paint than I thought it would be.)

Day 12 - Draw your nut participating in a historical event. (July 20, 1969 - Apollo 11 landed on the moon.)

Day 13 - Draw your nut's skeleton.

Day 14 - Draw a picture of yourself drawing your nut.

Day 15 - Draw what your nut wants to be when he grows up.

Day 16 - Draw things that allude to your nut.

Day 17 - Draw a picture of your nut swimming.

Day 18 - Draw a picture of your nut in a foreign country. (Inspired by my trip to Europe two summers ago.)

Day 19 - Draw your nut at the hospital.

Day 20 - Draw your nut with a burnt stick.

Day 21 - Draw you nut skydiving.

I would say that at about the Day 12 mark, my then just-an-acquaintance-from-church had been vigorously following my art project. WARNING. You are about to read some pretty flirtatious stuff. I advise all tweens to look away now, ha ;).

At the time I had invited him to go to a Hunger Walk with me to which he promptly responded, "You might be stuck with just me... and your walnut... if you bring it to 'Draw your nut doing something philanthropic'."

I definitely remember thinking, "Wow, he's handsome and funny!" Playing coy and unbeknownst to Waldo, I replied, "Haha I'll let you babysit Waldo for a weekend if you want to hang out with him so bad. Then you two can do as much philanthropy as you want!"

"Who wouldn't want to hang out with him? He does some cool stuff. I mean, he was on the moon! I'm jealous."

This was the beginning of a new friendship turned nearly one year old courtship. If you're curious, Waldo and my boyfriend did end up hanging out and I actually decided to give custody of Waldo to my boyfriend once the project was over. He still has Waldo on his desk today, sitting right by his computer at home. It's really quite cute.

As always, thanks so much for reading.