It Just Won't Scan

Here's one of the funny Allyson stories that I told Dad last Sunday to divert him from his anxiety over the next day's surgery....

After talking to her grandmother on the phone a couple of weeks ago, Allyson was inspired to send a letter to Nana and The Canada Grandpa. I have to admit that I cringed when she asked for a piece of paper; usually writing a "letter" takes up to 30 minutes. It goes something like this: "How do you spell 'I love you Nana?.... How do you spell 'I'?... How do you spell 'love'? How do you make a V?" With dogged persistence, Allyson writes one painstaking letter at a time until she finishes her masterpiece or decides it's too messy and starts it all over. Very rarely does she lose interest and abandon the project.

On this particular Sunday, Allyson surprised me by writing the entire letter on her own. She didn't ask me how to spell a single word, nor did she ask me to write the S for her. It turns out that she didn't sign her name as usual, and she apparently only chose letters that she already knew how to write. Here's what she wrote:


"That's a great letter, Allyson!" I said. "Do you think you should send a picture with it?"

"Yes!" she agreed enthusiastically, but she walked right past the bucket of random crayons and crayon fragments on the desk. She disappeared into my bedroom for a few minutes, and then I found her in her own room, playing on her toy laptop. I figured she'd forgotten about the picture.

On closer examination, I noticed that she had an old photo of herself--one of my favorites--lying on the keyboard.




"What are you doing with that picture?" I asked.

"I'm sending it to Nana and Grandpa."

"Are you sending it through the computer?" I asked, grinning.

"Well, I'm tryin'. But it just won't scan," she complained, perfectly serious.

I held in my laughter. "Honey, that's a toy computer. If we want to send that picture, we either have to copy it with Mama's scanner and email it, or we have to mail it in an envelope with a stamp."

"Oh, let's put it in a envelope! Can I put on the stamp?" Allyson was elated. She's infatuated with stamps of all sorts, especially postage stamps. I have to keep them hidden.

"Well, we don't use our stamps for letters to Canada. We usually take them to the post office," I explained.

"Oh," she said, deflated.

"But maybe we can put some of your drawings and your letter in an envelope, and we can take it to the post office."

"Yeah," she said, sounding skeptical.

So did we mail the letter? Sigh.... Umm, no. I guess that will be our project for the week.