In an effort to resist the stagnation of our middle twenties (I just realized recently that I will turn 25 in February, which just seems impossible), Megan and I have signed up for a pottery class. It is offered by the Virginia Beach Parks and Rec department on Monday nights.

I am very bad at pottery. This should not be a surprise to anyone. My family is not artistic (Except for my mother, who has found in quilting a way to transform compulsive detail-orientation and hyper-organization into an art). Since my sister and I went to many of the same schools, we would often have the same art projects, but two years apart. This is how it would go. I would make a really bad piece of art. Then my sister would make a very bad piece of art herself, but it would still manage to be 1000s of times better than mine, demonstrating that there are many levels of bad art - and I am at the absolute bottom.

Take, for example, this collection of my sister's art:

These are obviously very bad. In my sister's rendering, our mom's neck is about the width of her wrist, her lips are shifted considerably to the right side of her face. She also takes a bit of artistic license in adding a widow's peak to our mother's hairline. Also, what are those black things in her ear? The penguins are hardly any better - the little ones are ok, but the big one is both pathetic and terrifying, a deformed monster of a penguin, ostracized (one imagines) to the edges of the colony to stumble about and squawk gutturally until a leopard seal comes to put an end to its miserable existence.

Compared to my versions, however, these are masterful:

For the record, my mother is not a purple-necked slug woman. She is actually a normal human being with ears, a forehead, a chin, and normal human lips. Also, be sure to notice the note - terrible both in handwriting and content.

Now we turn to the penguin, if we can dignify this horrific monstrosity with the name of one of God's creatures. This nipple-faced demon has obviously been molded in the lightless fires of a terrible hell. Why else would it have no eyes? Its wings, apparently, have been devoured by the flames, or perhaps by Satan himself, leaving only a cruel, ragged stub - just enough to remind this unfortunate creature that some other penguins, somewhere, have real wings. The only sound we can imagine this penguin making is a quiet whine as it contemplates the horrible mystery of its existence.

So when I signed up for pottery class, I was not expecting immediate success, or really any success at all. I knew from the moment I walked in there that I was out of my league - the women of the class (there are no men besides me and Robert, our seasoned instructor) were largely of the middle-aged or grandmotherly variety. They were obviously pros. As it turns out, however, I am (for the first time in my artistic career) just ordinarily bad, not horrifically, terribly bad. I am better than the two other beginners, and while my pots frequently collapse, and are invariably asymmetrical. Also, while Megan and the other ladies manage to end the class with a little bit of dignified clay on their fingers, I look as though I have waded through the Great Dismal Swamp (which is a real swamp just south of Virginia Beach).

Anyway, here are my pots. They're not done yet, but stay tuned. I will be sure to post pictures of the glazed and fired final product.