started: 2/11/2019
finished: 2/17/2019
100 YGO Ficlets series 3 and Scrapbook series 2
67. Imperfection
This is a remix of "Kodak Memories".
Scrapbook Memories (Bird in the Hand Remix)
It wasn't until Yugi saw a drawing he'd made of a robin on a tree branch when he was barely old enough to hold a crayon that he realized just how differently little kids saw the world.
He remembered making that picture and being so proud of his accomplishment. He remembered kneeling in the bay window of his maternal grandparents' house and staring out at the bird perched on a tree limb just beyond the glass. He'd grabbed up his crayons and his paper, and he'd worked on that drawing as if he were an aspiring DaVinci and that robin was his Mona Lisa. And then he'd trotted off to find some adults to show it to, certain that they'd see what a fine artist he was.
He'd gotten that look little kids get when they proudly present a page full of scribbles and expect the viewer to know without any prompting that what appears to them to be piece of sunburned steel wool playing Twister with a pink and green pipe cleaner is actually a harbinger of Spring in an apple tree, thank you very much.
He could laugh about it now. At the time, he'd been convinced his drawing was perfectly realistic - Look! It looks just like the bird, can't you see?! - and couldn't figure out why all the grown-ups in his life were such poor art critics and apparently didn't know what birds were. Or tree branches. He remembered that he'd been very concerned about his family's observational skills for about a week afterward.
Which brought him back to now, laughing at the muddy red-brown squiggle on its green and pink pipe cleaner, and wondering how Grandma had kept a straight face when she called him her "little Audubon" as she taped the blob-robin to her refrigerator door. And his robin had stayed there until he brought her another, equally awful scribble to replace it.
Holding her scrapbook in his hands, he realized that she had saved them all, carefully preserving them in this book along with little notes in her beautiful, calligraphic handwriting about her "talented little Yugi."
He closed the book and hugged it tightly to his chest, wishing Grandma was still here so he could hug her, too.