Posted tagged ‘Crayola’

“My childhood smells like a box of Crayola crayons.”

November 30, 2012

I won’t bore you with a description of today’s weather. Ditto ought to be enough.

We all slept in this morning: Gracie, Fern and I. It was really late or early morning depending on how you look at time before I finally went to bed. It was 10 o’clock when I woke up. Gracie and Fern are already back to napping. Maddie is also napping. She is beside me on the couch and right next to the dog. This is monumental. Gracie has been chasing Maddie since Gracie first walked in the door when she was a puppy. Lately, though, Gracie ignores Maddie more than she chases her. They have even sniffed noses, an intimate move in the animal world. I don’t know if its familiarity after 7 years or just boredom which has caused Gracie to give up the chase. Poor Maddie has finally stopped running.

In grammar school, when I was in the first or second grade, we sometimes colored pictures near Christmas. The pictures were always of the manger scene, no Santa and no reindeer. The nun would have us pull out our boxes of crayons and we’d get busy. I remember I always made the straw yellow, a bit bright, but that was as close I could get to the real color of straw as shading colors was way off in my future. The halo over the Baby Jesus was the same color as the straw; a box of Crayola crayons in those days had limitations. The scene also had Mary and Joseph, the manger, always colored brown, a donkey and a shepherd with a lamb across his shoulders. I colored Mary’s dress blue because every statue had Mary in blue, different shades but still always blue. Joseph wore brown. The shepherd wore green and brown. The lamb wore white.

I’d scrawl my name at the top. It usually went all the way across the paper as I hadn’t yet mastered sizing my letters. Most time only Kathleen R. fit, and it was never written in a straight line. It sloped on the right and started going down the page. It didn’t matter. I was always proud of my work. It was perfect for hanging on the refrigerator art gallery.

“My childhood smells like a box of Crayola crayons.”

October 19, 2010

‘Tis a dreary day, cloudy and still. Last night was cold and some of it has lingered into the morning. Gracie’s coat feels chilly when she comes inside the house. Weekdays are quiet in my neighborhood.

My crayons were kept in a cigar box. The inside top and sides of the box were a panoply of colors. My crayons ranged from full size to barely big enough to hold. I never threw crayons away. I just couldn’t. I’d tear off the paper as they got smaller and smaller and then choose by hue rather than name. Every Christmas we’d find a familiar green and yellow box in our stockings. Nothing but Crayola Crayons would do. Any others were mere imitators. I liked it when the box came with a sharpener. Crayons with points made it easier to stay in the lines. I always thought white was a wasted color. I couldn’t see it on the coloring book page, and I had to run my finger over the spot to feel the crayon marks. The Christmas coloring books always had lots of pages of Santa with his white beard and his red suit trimmed in white, and I’d use my white crayon for the sake of my art.

By the time my Christmas crayons had become mere stubs, I’d get a new box in my Easter basket. Easter coloring books were my favorites. The eggs could be one or even multi-colored. The Easter Rabbit always wore a short jacket and most times I’d color it blue. I think the reason was the Peter Rabbit influence.

The biggest box of Crayola crayons was 64 when I was a kid. It had neat colors like forest green and, one of my personal favorites, raw umber, which no longer exists in a crayon box. Legions of kids will no longer know the color of umber.

I have some sets of crayons. One is a commemorative set of all the colors, including those retired over time. Raw umber is there along with lemon yellow and maize. That box is a keepsake, a piece of my childhood.

For Halloween this year, I am giving out boxes of crayons. I never give out candy; kids get enough of it everywhere else. The box is a small one with just five crayons, but five colors are enough to fill in just about any page in a coloring book.