Ode To A Crayon

A box of new crayons! Now they're all pointy, lined up in order, bright and perfect. Soon they'll be a bunch of ground down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps, missing their wrappers and smudged with other colors. Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic. ~Bill Watterson

I've been a little bit obsessed with Crayolas today. I bought a brand new box of 64, complete with sharpener no less, at Target, and I've been admiring them all afternoon - reading the names on their wrappers and thinking of all the wonderful pictures I can create.

It's probably been twenty plus years since I had a new box of 64 crayons, and I'm probably as excited to have them today as I was then.

However, I am a little bit concerned because there is a green crayon in the box called "asparagus". Seriously? And it's definitely not even the color of fresh asparagus, but some that has been boiled to a mush.

There are also new colors that I don't remember seeing before such as: purple mountain majesty, wisteria (Desperate Housewives, anyone?), robin's egg blue, timberwolf, macaroni and cheese (really, what is with the food colors?), and the absolute worst - I'm not sure if we are now still coloring or putting on lipstick, mauvelous.

Luckily some of my old favorites are still around. Periwinkle, burnt AND raw sienna, red violet, mahogany, brick red, spring green, plum...

And, as an added bonus, coloring now makes you trilingual. The color names are written in English, Spanish, and French. I now know that I can go to a restaurant and order asparagus, esparrago, or asperge and that the sky is blue, azul, or bleu.

I still haven't colored anything with my new crayons. Part of me really wants to keep my colors in their pristine condition, but I guess if I use them up, I'll just have an excuse to go buy some more. Maybe next time I'll go really wild and buy the box with 120!

Happy coloring!

As an added bonus, here is one of my favorite old time Sesame Street videos showing how crayons are made. I love it.