“Why isn’t anyone doing palm trees?”

The teacher’s tone carried a tone of frustration through the air. She almost said it as if she was angry at them.

A bunch of New England second grade kids sat silently in a classroom. Most of them probably had never even seen a palm tree before. Their minds were confined to the likenesses of great oaks, sweet maples, and tall pines. Even better, these kids were inner-city Boston kids. Not many choices for trees when you don’t have that many to look at.

Their drawings decorated the room. Their trees were all the basic brown tree stump and cloudy green mass for leaves. Add a blue sky and green ground and that’s all there is. Almost no one drew any seasonal trees. No fall colors, no dead winters. They were all variations on spring.

However, one boy took his teacher’s words seriously. He secretly began drawing a palm tree planted on a sandy, hilly island. He drew a tan line and then colored the round shape in. He took up his brown crayon and began drawing the outline for the tree, coloring it in as he finished. He began to draw pointy leaves for the palm tree growing out in various directions and colored those in when he was done. He even drew some coconuts to add to the scene. However, he was disappointed. He felt empty on the inside, almost shameful that he made it just because his teacher complained about the lack of variety. He didn’t feel proud of it and didn’t want to show it to anyone.

With a green crayon in hand, the same color as the leaves, he began to color over the sand. He scribbled furiously over the ground, growing grass over the arid landscape, reshaping the land, adding vegetation where there was none. He took his brown crayon and thickened the tree stump, making it straighter than the curvy palm he once made, and also enveloping the coconuts he had drawn. With a darker green, the color of forests, he drew an enormous cloudy figure around the original palm trees and just covered everything up.

He still did not feel proud of what he had done, but he thought it looked better than the palm tree. And it was still hung on the wall in the forest of all the other kids’ drawings. The teacher never said anything else about the trees. Either she gave up on them or just let them be. Maybe both. Maybe neither. No one else ever saw that boy’s original drawing that day, but that didn’t matter. All he cared about was whether he made the right choice or not.