Inside a creepy, blue, neon light-infested shack on the side of a major road in my hometown works Psychic Mary. I entered her cavern one night a few years ago only to leave without any knowledge of my future and without the $20 I paid her. Psychic Mary did not seem to be in tune with the other world as I had anticipated.

I, unlike Psychic Mary, am far more in sync with the supernatural, and have been for years, because of my supreme ability to create the greatest cootie catchers of all time.

That’s right: I am basically Raven Baxter minus the visions and plus folded fortuneteller masterpieces.

Unfortunately, my psychic abilities did not lend themselves well to a pin, so I decided to see where my paper folding skills could take me. I settled on attempting an origami elephant because I have a particular affinity for Mr. Snuffleupagus but could not find instructions on how to create an origami Snuffy.

In the past, my origami ventures outside of cootie catchers have not proved to be especially successful. The one thing I have learned is that precision is very key when trying to make something out of paper, so I approached this project with a commitment to being as exact as possible.

With this attitude, I began the tutorial. I found it to be very user-friendly because it was a video, as opposed to a written explanation. I was able to rewind and replay different steps that I didn’t catch the first time in order to make sure my elephant would eventually come to fruition.

The video itself lasts a little more than 14 minutes, but after about five, I was ready to call it quits. My elephant looked like nothing more than a lopsided triangle with one area resembling an ear.

However, all of the sudden, I was instructed to turn my piece of paper over, and there rested something that looked somewhat like an elephant if you closed your left eye and turned your head slightly to the side. After about seven minutes, my paper elephant head fully took shape, and I outfitted my creation with an eye and a smile. The smile looked foolish and out of place, so I promptly erased it. My elephant would be a stoic creature.

When all was said and done, my creation looked more like an elephant with the ears of a beagle than an actual elephant, but I am still pleased with it. I have named my elephant Gordo after the “Lizzie McGuire” character, and hopefully he will bring me some luck in making it through the home stretch of the quarter.

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Twitter: @hayleyg6994