Pink elephants and good friends

By the time I was in grade 10 at school, I had found a pretty awesome group of friends. In fact, nearly all of us are still involved in each other’s lives to some extent. Being such a big group, we did have little groups of ‘best’ friends and I am so lucky that I am still in touch with mine. We have been each other’s bridesmaids and are ‘aunts’ to children and regularly keep in touch, despite great distances between us.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted pictures of Archie on my facebook page. He is the first toy that I have been a bit more imaginative with. For some reason, I tend to like a certain level of realism in my animals, but the idea of a super hero elephant was too inviting to pass up!

After I had made Archie, the thought struck me that I should make a pink elephant and I knew it had to be. My friends and I have quite an affinity with pink elephants, ever since history class. Some of my fondest moments are from Modern History. I have to question how much work we did, seeing as I have more illegal notes saved from those lessons than knowledge of whatever it was we studied.

A, J, F and I all sat together, mostly counting how many times a particular girl did her hair (10 times over 90 minutes) and quoting our favourite jokes from DAAS, Good News Week or the like. F would roll her eyes at us as she diligently copied notes from the board (can you guess who got the OP1?), knowing we would want to copy them later, while we giggled quietly and not so quietly.

During our research time for one particular assignment, A became very frustrated. She had asked our teacher if she was on the right track and he responded that as long as she had research to back it up, she was fine. She stormed back to the rest of us and exclaimed, “I could say that ‘pink elephants have tea at three o’clock’ and as long as I can find evidence, then I’m right!”

After that, the phrase, ‘pink elephants have tea at three o’clock’, or drawings of elephants in J’s case, appeared on every practice exam, assignment task sheet and general worksheet we had to complete for history, resulting in uncontrollable giggles.

We’ve gotten older since then and the giggles are not as frequent, but whenever I stood in front of a Sose class and talked about the importance of research to back up their point of view, I could almost imagine pink elephants in the corner of the class room.

So this year, for J's birthday, she has received 'Elen' my pink elephant. I did have an epic fail with cheap wool felt...

I managed to salvage the ears and used left over fabric from the girls' table tent. I then made her a little watch from felt scraps and set out to find a tea cup. I have to ask, do children not have tea parties anymore? I went everywhere! But I eventually found a gorgeous pink set at Big W (Big and Little don't notice that there is a cup and saucer missing) to complete Elen.

So, happy birthday, J! Enjoy your elephant and thanks for being my friend through it all!