One summer morning, after finishing the laundry, Emily Friendly’s mom leaned out the laundry room window and called down to her daughter.
“Honey, will you grab the pins and hang the clothes outside?” Mrs. Friendly said to Emily. Mrs. Friendly glanced at a basket of wooden clothespins beside her.
“Sure, Mom!” called 7-year-old Emily, sitting outside and reading in the sun.
Emily was buried in stacks of books, with pens poked in her hair. Sometimes she read. Sometimes she wrote.
She placed her bookmark at her stopping point and pushed three pens behind her ears. She climbed from her chair and ran up the back steps. All she could think about was how the book she was reading might end.
Even with her racing mind, she piled her mom’s wet clothes into a plastic laundry basket. She kissed her mother on the cheek, as her mom finished cleaning up.
“Love you, Mom!” Emily said, as she grabbed a cushion of sharp pins and put them in the basket. She looked at the wooden clothespins, but thought, “Pins are pins… right?”
Emily left the wooden clothespins on the counter. Then, she ran down the back steps and darted out into the warm mid-morning sun.
“What beautiful tall trees!” Emily said, walking right past the clothesline hung between two Elms. She pulled the pincushion from the basket and pinned the wet clothes to the trees.
One by one, she stuck pins through the shirts, pants, skirts, and even underwear into the tree bark. Then she stood back, in awe of her wonderful artistic creation. It was almost as though she painted the trees with clothes, and they charmingly blew in the wind.
The shirts flapped like flags, and the socks hung from branches like fruit. The underwear fluttered like birds. Emily felt so proud.
“What in the world did you do with my clothes?” Mrs. Friendly yelled from the window. “Why didn’t you hang the clothes on the clothesline like you’ve seen me do for years?”
“I did exactly what you said to do, Mom! You told me to grab the pins,” Emily said. “I only did what you said!”
“Oh, Emily,” her mom sighed. “You read too many books—and you have too many pens.”
“I know you can see the beauty in my art!” Emily yelled, as she plopped herself on the ground. She could hear her mother laughing from the window.
Sitting in the grass, Emily thought about her mother’s request. There was always a new story to read and write—and the ending was never what you expected.
“I know my words matter,” her mom said, walking into the backyard. “Let’s do the laundry together.”
“I’m going to turn this misunderstanding into a story,” Emily said.
“And maybe next time,” her mom said with a smile, “the clothesline and the trees can share the job.”
Copyright 2015 Jennifer Waters
LOGLINE
When a book-loving, literal-minded girl is asked to “grab the pins” and hang the laundry, she turns a simple chore into an unexpected work of art—teaching both child and parent that words matter, and creativity can be found in the most ordinary moments.
PITCH
Seven-year-old Emily Friendly spends her summer days buried in books and scribbling stories, so when her mother asks her to “grab the pins” and hang the laundry, Emily does exactly that—using sharp pins to attach wet clothes to the tall backyard trees instead of the clothesline. Shirts flap like flags, socks hang like fruit, and Emily proudly admires her accidental masterpiece. At first frustrated, Emily’s mother soon realizes the misunderstanding was her own and that her daughter’s creativity deserves understanding, not correction. Together, they redo the laundry and discover that clear words—and a little imagination—can make even everyday chores a shared story worth telling.
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