A Cautionary Tale: Stray from the instructions at your own peril

In my early elementary school years, my teacher once handed out a worksheet and told us to read the instructions and get started. Being a typical young student, I got out my pencil and started right in on question #1 without bothering to read the directions first. A line at the bottom of the worksheet said, "When you have answered all the questions on this paper, you may write your name on the blackboard!" Also being a know-it-all-teacher's-pet-showoff, I finished as fast as I could, sprinted to the board, and scrawled my name in gigantic letters so everyone would see that I was done.

Did you have an assignment like this in elementary school, too? Do you know what the instructions, which I failed to read, said? "Don't answer any of these questions; turn this paper over and doodle on the back side until your teacher says the time is up." 

It was an exercise in following directions--those who had taken the time to read the instructions knew that we showoffs hadn't bothered to figure out the purpose of the handout, and doodled smugly in their seats until the teacher pointed out that some students didn't know how to follow instructions.

An important lesson that I clearly didn't learn.

(sigh)

Where to begin with this disastrous failure . . . well, like everybody else with two brain cells to rub together, I love this shoe makeover that Katy of Sweet Verbena came up with:

 $5 Walmart sneakers? A packet of fabric dye? I can totally handle this!

Or not.

Everything started out okay . . . I gathered up my supplies and could hardly wait to see my shoes take on that lovely turquoise pictured on the fabric dye:

But it became clear pretty quickly as my shoes bobbed about in the dye that they were not going to be turquoise, or anything remotely resembling turquoise. I should have taken a picture for you (but your corneas will thank me for the lapse)--they were fiercely blue. Atomic-ly, piercingly, nuclear blue. This is where a lesson learned in elementary school about following instructions would have really paid off . . . I could have stopped here, realized things had gone awry, pitched the shoes, and started fresh by following Katy's instructions a second time. 

But I launched a rescue mission instead. First, I tried scrubbing the shoes under boiling hot water. The shoes and their offensive blue-ness were unaltered, but I think I need to get some skin grafts for my melted hands. Then I got out my big jug of bleach and dumped it over my sneakers, thinking that I could soften it up to more of a robin's egg blue.

That's not so much "robin's egg blue" as "stomped in a puddle of kool-aid."

I know what you're thinking . . . just stop. Let the shoes go. Accept your failure. But no, there's more.

I remembered that I had a bottle of fabric painting medium in my basement, which you can mix with any old acrylic paint so it will adhere to fabric. Brilliant, no? (No!)

Not only did I completely decimate all the portions of the shoes that were supposed to stay white, but it is painfully obvious that I painted my sneakers. The pictures don't quite do it justice--they are downright crunchy. 

And just when you think I can't possibly do anything more to humiliate myself with these sneakers, inspiration struck again! I thought, "Maybe if I run them under really hot water and scrub them, I'll be able to get rid of that crinkly, painted look."

Another fail. I guess you can't scrub away fabric paint--they began to turn a sickly gray in what I can only assume was a desperate plea for me to just let them die, and I finally took pity on them and put them out of their misery (may you rest in peace in the garbage dump, you poor, poor sneakers). 

Lesson learned: follow the instructions, dammit.