L recently bought an activity book called “Fabulous Me!” at the school book fair. I can’t deny my decided lack of enthusiasm at the decided lack of humility in the title, but this is the twenty-first century: “I” must stand at the center of everything, and it’s pretty inescapable.

One portion is entitled “Fabulous Fashion,” and it includes a checklist of patterns for material with boxes marked “fab” and “drab” for little fashionistas to mark their opinion of each.

“Daddy, can you help me with this?” she asked just before bed the other night. “I don’t know what these patterns are.”

I promised to sit with her at the computer and help her look them up. “Now, Daddy?” became a mantra in the house. Tonight after dinner, we finally took the time to explore patterns.

Tartan was the first. I was curious what she would think — after all, her last name does has a distinctly Scottish feel to it.

Her reaction was instant and unqualified: “Preeetty!”

“Floral print” was sure to be a hit. After all, she is always interested in flowers. She wants to pick them, to grow them, to draw them.

And based on her reaction — “Wow!” — probably to wear them now.

When we came to “check pattern,” I thought she’d turn up her nose. Compared to a floral pattern, it’s awfully rigid; compared to a tartan, it’s virtually monochromatic. (Well, I guess most check patterns are in fact monochromatic.)

The reaction was a half-hearted, “It’s nice.” She checked off “fab,” but not with much enthusiasm.

When she read the next pattern, “heart print,” she was excited before I even began typing it into the search bar. She knew — just knew — it would be something special.

“Yes!” she shouted, checking off “fab” and adding another “Yes!” for good measure.

I thought “stripes” would get a pass. Not that she wouldn’t like them — she did, so-so. I just thought she wouldn’t care so much what Google dished up. Turned out, that’s exactly what she was curious about.

“I just want to see. You know, I want to see what they show for ‘stripes.'”

Zig zag print

“Gingham,” I thought, being essentially a check pattern, would elicit the same response. Wrong.

“No!” she said emphatically, checking off “drab” with decided purposefulness.

Finally, we reached “animal print.” The best reaction of all.

“Goooorgeous!”

Indeed.