64 Crayons

Sometimes you have to laugh at yourself - who you were, what you became, etc., etc. Sometimes, you have people laughing AT you. If you are an acrobat (or a very bad acrobat is even better), a person with unnatural animal tendencies, or a mother, you get laughed at alot. If you're any combination of the above, you are numb to laughter by now. For some time now, I have been the subject of some ridicule or mocking by all my family members for being someone who hoards strange things. Truly.

There are some things you hate to run out of. Some things just too good to pass up, and some things you KNOW YOU WILL NEED later and will pay way more for - like crayons. I'm not blaming my beloved family. I fully acknowledge the 'defect' but, strange as it is, it almost always seems to work out in everyone's best interests with the exception of my fiber stash.

We are an artistic family. We color, paint, and make lots of messes. We do horrid things to crayons like melt them, make them into things, and make bloody wars with them. The latter is my real topic today. Recently, I had to laugh at myself because I realized that the 'knowing' of how many boxes of crayons we can use in a year, combined with a recent period of dillusion wherein I taught k1-2nd graders how to read - I became 'absorbed' by the question of how many boxes of crayons is enough. What, are they eating them? So, because I'm always on a budget, I go in when the back to school hell is thick and stock up on an absurd number of boxes of crayons while they are cheap. This year, the kids mocked me for always getting the boxes of 24. Why never a few boxes of the more exotic shades in 48, or, dare I say, a box of 64, thing 2 taunted me with this in the aisle at Wallymt. Other mothers smirked and one even laughed with him at me. I buckled. Had I stifled my dear creatures own creativity by denying them blue violet and just giving them purple? Thing 3 would say, "Yeah, but this box has SILVER" because they are all out to destroy me. Four boxes of 64 each later, and months since, I pulled out the last box of 64 to enjoy some time coloring out of our favorite coloring books (Dover), I became distracted, left my coloring and some kids in a circle. When I came back, thing 1 was spinning again and thing 2 was showing thing 3 the virtues of crayon war. Just goes to show you that all that crap about building self-esteem and treating all kids like kids whether they are boys or girls is crap. I rode bikes on a dirt road, rode horses in the rodeo, and sported a hard core hot wheels collection - but I never created crayon war. They had separated 64 into all the shade groups. Then, pine green shot the first arrow at the yellow and orange camp and the battle had begun. The good greens and browns and purples were rushing in to help but, in the end, burnt sienna - breathing his last ragged breaths after being stabbed with a sword, shot an arrow at green and it went clean through him and took out the last standing crayon - blue violet. This, my friends, is what happens when you don't let your children play with guns.