Lisa looked around at the other children in her class.

Each hunched over a sheet of construction paper, little fingers tightly gripping crayons, their young brows furrowed in concentration as they drew. The others had proceeded to draw the moment their teacher handed them the materials and instructed them to draw flowers. From what she could see, the other children slowly drew yellow petal flowers on straight green stems.

She had quickly drawn pretty flowers of orange colored petals, on purple stems. Flowers do not look like that, she was told. Her drawing was taken away and she was given a new sheet of paper. Lisa then drew a rainbow of multi-hued petals on swirls of green vines. Again, the drawing was taken away. She was told, to only yellow petal flowers on straight green stems.

Lisa’s paper remained blank. She complained she did not want to draw yellow flowers on green stems, that there were other colors. It did not matter. They only wanted yellow petal flowers on straight green stems. She had to draw to yellow petal flowers on straight green stems. The other children started to tease; the teacher was clearly losing patience. When it finally became too much, Lisa drew yellow petal flowers on straight green stems.

A few couple of years later, her family moved and Lisa was now in a new school. Her new teacher instructed the class to draw flowers. Lisa wanted to know what kind? Whatever kind Lisa wanted to draw was the response.

Any kind of flower?
Any color flower?

Any way she wanted it to look, the teacher smiled kindly.

Lisa her selected crayons and drew…

…yellow petal flowers on straight green stems.