When I was in elementary school I had a project where I had to make some kind of diorama.
My diorama called for mud, but there was only one problem. It hadn’t rained in ages! There was no mud to be found! I was mudless, dry, bereft.
I walked the confines of the farm in search of my quest, and lo, I found it! Mud! It wasn’t much, but it was mine, and my diorama could progress.
My mom came home later that day and checked in.
“What is this?” She sounded unhappy.
“It’s my diorama!”
“Where did you get this?”
“From the horse pastures! It was hard to find mud, but there was some out there.”
My mother regarded me, her offspring, like I was an alien creature new to this planet. “….Why on earth would you get mud from the horse pasture? It’s dirty!”
“It’s dirt,” I confirmed in perplexity.
“You should have taken dirt from the front yard and added water!”
I was scandalized. Those were the ingredients for mud but to play god by synthesizing mud from what was previously only dirt and water was cheating. I could not adequately convey this to my outraged mother.
But as an adult I look back on this and think, that woman came home, tired from a full day of work, and found her kid elbows deep in a horseshit diorama. Perhaps a little frustration was permissible.
