In honor of our First President's delinquent beginnings

After binging on a bag of cherries, I am flooded with memories of when cherries caused me to be bad, and how I expressed my lessons in art.

The year was 1980. A kindergartner at George Elementary, it was painfully clear that an artist I was not. For Christmas gifts, our teacher was having us make drinking mugs for our parents. A strip of paper was to be decorated in crayon, with any scene we wanted. We were encouraged to tell a story. Some kids drew their families. Me, I was inspired by the piecemeal history stories I had heard and my apparent kinship with a president with an affection for cherries.

Our President, George Washington, stands next to a tree, with big red dots on it. Apparently, a cherry tree, but looking very much like an apple tree. He is decked out in a huge blue top hat, which is either Lincoln-esque, or pilgrim-esque. His axe is as big as he is, as well as the tree, and for that matter, his top hat. Dark clouds loom. He wears a huge toothy green, and he stands atop of a thick cluster of horizontal green strips, a five-year old's version of a grassy knoll. On the far end of the strip, where the clouds are clear and sunshine is smiling down, a stick figure with a big round head smiles. It is me. Apparently, pleased to be with George as he committs his sin of cherry-tree chopping. I was always a fan of cherries, so to me, this event was worth a big grin. I must have ran out of time, since my body ended up stick. I wonder why he is under dark scary clouds, but I am safe and dry in the rainbow side of the page....

This art was later stuck into a plastic drinking mug and sealed. It has accessorized my mom's desk for 25 years. Along with kid sister's tin can with similar effect, although she was clearly more artisitically inclined.

I remember the story I felt I had captured. Of a young man, who knew his way around an axe and a cherry tree. A young man who did wrong and yet still redeemed himself someday and was in poster-portraits in classrooms across the nation. It was a story of going for what you wanted, or problem-solving, kid-empowerment, and redemption. And all the yummy cherries a kid could eat.

Maybe the story appealed to me since my cousin and I were devious little runts and climbed unto my grandma's roof regularly to pick cherries off her tree and swallow them by the tiny handfuls. We would eat till we had stained chubby fingers and somebody had to go the bathroom. Our cherry blood splotched bare chests, pot-bellies, and faces earned us cherry-picking convictions everytime. Punishments were light, due to Mother Nature's own discipline. Scheming, brave, sweet and delinquent...I was cherry-driven. And thus, George Washington was a hero worth capturing for all of time in a gift for mom.