I can’t wrap a gift to save my life
Yet I can fold hundreds of origami cranes, no sweat
For our wedding, my wife wanted me to fold origami cranes to use as decorations. For those that don’t know, origami is the Japanese art of paper folding. Usually, but not always, animals are folded from a square piece of paper. Some paper is simple in design while others are very intricately decorated.
So, over the course of two weekends, and a total folding time of 24 1/2 hours, I created over 500 cranes, in three sizes (3 inches by 3 inches, 4 inches by 4 inches, and 6 inches by 6 inches) and in two styles, flying and nesting. They were used for everything from the wedding party’s boutonnieres and bouquets, to the table centerpieces and table number cards, to cascading around the wedding cake.
All folded to near perfection.
But this is gift-giving season. Where beautiful wrapping paper is adorned with ribbons and bows and nametags and all neatly folded and taped.
And I can’t do any of that.
I think it may have to do with the fact that I can’t cut a straight line using scissors. Not even close. I’m so bad at using scissors that my high school art teacher threatened to fail me if I didn’t learn to cut in a straight line. I didn’t. And lucky for me, she didn’t.
You see, origami paper is, for the most part, perfectly square. No need to cut it. All the edges line up when foldered so there is no guessing. Whereas when I cut paper, the line is anything but straight. Edges are ragged and go off at an angle. I try to fudge it by folding the cut edge over to create a straight edge but that only works if I’m using a piece of wrapping paper that came from the end of the roll where it was cut by the manufacutrer. If I start with an edge that came from a cut I made, then the folded edge is worse.
My entire family can tell who wrapped what gifts under the Christmas tree or who it was that wrapped a birthday gift.
And as I sit here, looking under the Christmas tree at the gifts all nicely wrapped on one side and my catastrophic wrapping on the other, I can give thanks to the fact that someone out there probably has the same problem I do, and created the gift bag as a result.
