Ashley

Ashley met Oops while she was coloring a picture of an elephant. She wanted to give the finished picture to her best friend, Ben.

Ben’s birthday was the next week, and he really liked jungle animals. His room was filled with them: lions, tigers, giraffes, monkeys, hippos. But Ben’s room didn't have any elephants yet. Ashley knew that if she did her very best coloring, the elephant picture would make a great gift for Ben, and it would look very nice hanging in his room.

Ashley had finished coloring the elephant’s body and was just starting on its trunk, when suddenly, something tickled her nose and she sneezed a huge sneeze. And when she sneezed, her crayon slipped and made a scribbly mark outside the lines of the drawing.

"Oops!" she said. And Oops immediately appeared by her side.

But Ashley didn't see him. Her eyes were filled with tears. "I ruined the picture!" she cried. "Now, I have no gift for Ben! What am I going to do?"

"You could make that mark look like grass the elephant is eating," Oops suggested.

But Ashley didn’t hear him. She was crying too loudly.

Oops examined the picture more closely and laughed. "It looks like the elephant sneezed too." He looked at Ashley to see if she thought it was as funny as he did.

Ashley couldn't hear anything except the plip-plop noise her tears made as they landed in the crayon box.

"I think Ben is going to like this elephant picture a lot," Oops said. "You made it yourself, and it has a funny story too. I can’t stop smiling when I look at that elephant."

Ashley didn't say anything. She was too busy crying.