September, 2012

Old Hippies Never Die (They Just Smell That Way)

One of the things the hippie movement should be praised for: tie-dye. Oh, they didn't invent it—but they escalated it to something beyond mere art form. Mass-marketed and machine-made shirts may be pretty—but I'll take home-grown backyard craft first. My mother was the crafts chairman for many of my years in Girl Scouts, and often helped out at school, too. And we did cool stuff. Mom taught us tie-dye, silk screening, carved potato ink stamping, batik (under very, very careful supervision), even papermaking and marbling the end product. We had a blast. I also took the treat box home on a way-too-frequent basis because everyone liked her cookies best. I had a high hurdle to live up to in the Mom department.

But I threw myself into the job with enthusiasm (if not sense). Lexi was definitely not ready to do tie-dye—but Charlie sure was, and Ev and Lily joined in the fun. Thus from the tender age of one month, my kid looked like a refugee from Woodstock. (As time went on, it was a great way to salvage grape juice stained clothes, too.)

As she got older, I taught Lexi how to do her own tying and direct what part of the shirt or shorts to put in which color of dye. She had some pretty good results, sometimes by design, sometimes by accident.

At school, the teachers raved about her outfits. I'm as susceptible to praise as anyone—so, in a moment of weakness, I agreed to teach a room full of four-year-olds how to twist and tie t-shirts.

I must have been out of my mind.

Parents kicked in five bucks to cover a t-shirt and one packet of dye. Because sharing is a good thing, we let them order a second or third shirt for just an additional two dollars each. I made a list of sizes and a grid of how many in which color and went shopping.

Bright and early on a Wednesday morning, I schlepped Lexi, 8 big plastic bowls, a bag of dye packs, salt and dye fix, a second bag of string, rubber bands, super balls and marbles, and three jumbo-sized bags of t-shirts from Target. ("You got a lot of kids?" the clerk was startled into saying. "No, just one, but he hates to wear the same thing twice," I shot back.)

The teacher's aide, an Early Childhood Education major named Josh, was particularly good at tying hard knots and twisting rubber bands tightly around balls and marbles (it makes a nice target/giant polka dot effect). His 20-year-old fingers are far more limber than my 56-year-old ones (or Miss Kimberley's 38-year-old ones). We spent an hour showing them how to twist and tie, how to get different effects with the marbles or folding the fabric, and then actually tying the shirts.

The kids had mostly stuck to the basic colors—we let them choose up to three—with bowls of pink and purple for the princess contingent. We also had black for a number of Goths in the making: black and white, with some black and red and a couple of kids prepping for Halloween with black and orange. I made plastic tabs with the names of the kids and the one to three colors they has selected so there wouldn't be any "That's' my purple and pink shirt!" "No, it's mine!" arguments going on.

We rinsed the lumps of fabric and moved them to the second dye baths. I poked and prodded and turned shirts while Miss Kimberley and Josh played a rousing game of something resembling "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" with the kids. An hour later, we rinsed shirts and put the few that wanted a third color in for another bath while the kids ate lunch and went down for a nap. We rinsed the two-color shirts and started to hang them.

"Ohhhhh, Houston, we have a problem," Kimberley moaned softly.

I was pinning shirts on an art rack. "What?" I kept my voice low so the kids wouldn't wake up.

"We've got a lot of Christmas going on."

I pinned the last shirt and hurried to the other side of the room where Kim was working at the second art rack. "What do you mean?"

"A number of the kids opted for red and blue on white. Very patriotic. The tags say red and blue, but—"

"Urk." Ten t-shirts, all red and green. I had put the dye bowls in Roy G. Biv order—or something close to it. We had tossed the empty dye packets in the trash—too tempting for little fingers—but figured we could keep things straight. Apparently not. The only big plastic tubs I could find at the dollar store were hot pink and lime green—the dye baths all took on a weird cast because of it. "I'm sorry, Kim, I though I had it under control."

"'sup?" Josh came in from the laundry room (with a campus full of toddlers, it was necessary) with a basket full of rinsed shirts in hand.

"A minor snafu," I sighed. "I mixed up some shirts—they got green instead of blue."

Josh stopped. "What?"

"They were right next to each other—red-orange-yellow-green-blue—no indigo, so we put the black there—violet, and then pink at the end."

"Um—" He looked guilty. "Don't kick your own, butt, Sandy. Kick mine. I'm blue-green colorblind. I was in a rush on the second round through—I thought I might have mixed them up…" He made a face. "I am soooooo sorry…"

Because I bought mega-packs of t-shirts, we had extras; when the kids woke up, we had the few with problems tie new shirts and promised the parents they would be ready the next day. They were all pretty cool about the situation; one mom was even delighted. "I can hide these for Christmas!" she burbled. "By then he'll have forgotten he even made them and we can give them to him and his sister for presents!"

A real lemonade out of lemons kind of gal.