“How did you do that?” is a phrase I hear a lot. It’s not because I do magic or mind-blowing tricks. The awe and praise goes to something that most people see everyday: paper. What could possibly be so interesting about paper? How about a standing dragon with curved wings and horns and a tail that swerves up and down? What about a swallowtail butterfly with circular wings that curve on the edges? It might even be as simple as a couple of small stars puffed up to look like little pillows. No matter what form it comes in, origami has become an essential part of my life.
I started folding in middle school when my class was learning how to make paper cranes. It was so hard to make. It killed me when I couldn’t get a step right or figure out how to make a good crease or understand the process. I kept trying, refolding and retracing my steps to try to make a small paper bird. It was a like an algebraic problem that had to be checked and rechecked to make sure a step wasn’t missed. Three paper snowballs later, I finally made a paper crane. It felt like playing a competitive mind game. And winning. After that, I was able to make one crane after another. My obsession began.
I would practice nonstop. Hours upon hours would go by just sitting at a desk, folding away at torn out squares from printer paper. YouTube and Google were my teachers and I retraced steps and copied videos until I got everything right. If I couldn’t figure out how to make something, I didn’t give up. I would use paper squares one after another until I got the perfect model. If I couldn’t get my origami the same as the diagrams, I would sit in frustration.
One night, I flailed my arms around in pure anger. I smacked my hand into the desk lamp, making it shoot off the desk and plummet to the floor. I had to forget about the pain in my wrist to place the swinging light back into its upright place. I bruised my arm and almost broke my lamp all because I couldn’t understand how to make the ears on an origami rabbit.
My craze and devotion to origami grew larger and larger. Relatives and others began to just give me origami paper for birthdays and Christmas because that was all I wanted.
When there was spare time in classes because of testing, I would fold away. After I was done with homework, I would make more cranes and stars. My hobby began to take all of my free time. Besides my social life flying out the window, I feel like I caused the whole destruction of the Amazon Rainforest from all the paper I used. Small rejected scraps of paper lay all over my bedroom floor from cutting out as many squares from one sheet as possible. My room became the inside of a paper shredder.
Am I crazy for my love of origami? Is there such a thing as being too passionate about paper? Should I try and keep myself in check to make sure trees still exist? Of course. After every origami model I make, I question if I’m doing anything productive in life. But then someone always comes along and says, “How did you do that?” Origami gave me something to put my pride in and I get this special feeling when people look at my origami like they’ve just seen magic.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaWjoqfM8hM]
– By Elizabeth Her