Day One of 100

Ten little paper cranes, in all colors of the rainbow, perch next to my keyboard as I type this. My experiment in senbazuru has begun.

I started this afternoon, when the house was quiet and I was alone. The first sheet of paper to come randomly out of the pack was -- aha! -- red. Deep, fiery red. The color of anger. Couldn't have scripted this better, myself.

I thought, after several practice sessions, that I was ready. I'd whip out Crane No. 1 in a flash. Just like I'd been doing this all my life.

Nuh-uh.

I hate to admit it, but that first crane took me 30 minutes to create. A full half-hour. (By contrast, the people in the how-to videos whip one out in about four minutes flat.) Jeez, how humbling. My fingers were totally illiterate. What started out as a nice, smooth wafer of origami paper quickly turned into a wrinkled mess.

As my frustration grew, I could feel my heart beating faster. I got so hot I had to get up and turn on the ceiling fan. I was muttering under my breath.

And then it hit me: This is what anger feels like in the body. The books all tell you to stop and examine your symptoms, to observe (and defuse) anger before it takes you over. But I'm usually too busy yelling, right from the get-go. By the time I "notice" that I'm angry, the cat is, so to speak, out of the bag -- claws unsheathed and fangs bared.

So little Crane No. 1, an angry red, offered me the very first lesson of this experiment. Amazing. When I finally got him finished, he didn't look too good. I set him on the desk and he promptly fell over. Still won't stand up straight.

Even so, I predict he'll be my favorite, out of all 1,000.