My Cotton Wool Snowman

Suffering from a severe case of writers block, sitting on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, my partner offered me a poem to finish that she had started but had lost interest in.
I was taken aback!
Although she meant well and was just trying to help, I have to be honest and say that I was slightly insulted.
Why, on earth would I want to finish someone else’s work?
And this, in turn, brought back a childhood memory:

When I was at junior school, about 8 or 9 years old, it was the last day of school before Christmas.

A couple of days before, the class had all made a cotton wool snowman;
this was an outline of a snowman drawn on a piece of card, which we had then glued, and covered with cotton wool, to look like snow; raisins for the eyes and half a cocktail cherry for the nose,
and upto my usual intense and sometimes annoyingly high standards, mine was obviously a work of art.

In her wisdom our teacher, Mrs Wilson, a great big fat miserable whale, and professional child bully, didn’t think it necessary for us to write our names on our work, so they all went in the cupboard together.

As the class drew to a close, Mrs Wilson growled at us to collect our snowmen.
It was pandemonium!
There were arms and legs everywhere, pushing and shoving, a barrage of noise;
and then a murmuring silence...
We all realised that, with no names, how would we find our own work?

As the tiny crowd swayed with confusion, Mrs Wilson grunted at us to get on with it.

“But... we don’t know which one is ours Miss”, cowered one of the braver kids.

Mrs Wilson rolled into the mass like a bowling ball, sending us flying like skittles!

“For goodness sake”, she bellowed,
grabbing the stack of cards and virtually launching them at us,

“It doesn’t matter!

They are all the same!!!”

I held out my arm, and a piece of card was stuffed into my hand.

Looking at my prize I realised that it was not the ‘piece de resistance’ that I had nurtured with love, and finely honed into a thing of beauty;

this was a crumpled pile of fucking shit with cotton wool hanging off it, glue splodges all around the edges, and one eye missing!

Trying in vain to look at the other children’s snowmen, in case they had mine, was futile!
The goons of the class either didn’t care, or had been given one better than their own, and had made a beeline for the door, disappearing into Christmas past.

Sitting in mum’s car on the way home, still gripping someone else’s abortion, I wondered what would become of MY snowman...

Handed to a proud parent perhaps? The Judas taking full credit for MY work!
Even taking pride of place on the wrong family’s Christmas tree!

I never did find my snowman, not even after intensive investigations and questioning in the new year, but I did learn an important lesson...

Some people just like the accolade of success...

Not the pride!