Right Brain...Which One is That?

A friend of ours recently treated his fiancee, Tiffany and me to a surprise pottery-making session.

"Bring your right-brains!" he wrote in a cryptic email letting us know where we were supposed to show up and when.

Tiffany and I looked at each other.

"Which one is the right brain?" she asked me. "The one I don't have?"

On our drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to meet our friends, we racked our brains trying to imagine what he had in store for us.

I have to admit I had a momentary panic when he led us into the art studio belonging to his neighbor. The teacher-in-residence greeted us, offering us white smocks and chunks of cool clay. I hated art class in high school. My teacher called me Becky and laughed every time I showed her what I was working on. Nothing I ever worked on was meant to be funny.

This woman seemed different.

"Make whatever you want," she said, tossing molds onto the table. Our friends were making a set of dinner plates.

Tiffany and I immediately went into a huddle.

"What should we make?" I whispered.

"What do we need?" Tiffany said. "That's what we should decide first. We already have plates..."

"Does this clay go in the oven? Because we've always wanted ramekens."

"Do you think we could make ramekens? That seems kind of hard."

The teacher leaned into our space.

"How about you don't worry?" she said. "How about you each make something different, just for yourself?"

I stared at her, open-mouthed.

I had no idea what I wanted to make out of clay. The realm of possibilities spread out before me and I was immobilized. But, then Tiffany and I were inspired.

"A hot chocolate mug!" I cried.

"A popcorn bowl!" she declared.

We spent the next couple of hours rolling our clay out and shaping it into shapes somewhat resembling: a hot chocolate mug decorated with a palm tree and moon, a popcorn bowl with the shape of a pig at the bottom, a fruit bowl with a palm tree (once I found that cookie cutter, I couldn't put it down), and two spoon-ish-looking devices.

Later, when I looked at our clay things laying in the sun, I laughed.

But not like my high school art teacher.