Tuesday, August 11, 2015

A New Box of Crayons

It's that time of year. Time to buy new school supplies. Time to get ready for that first day of classes. A time that has passed me by, after so many years of being both a student and a teacher. Watching my husband prepare for teaching his graduate students just isn't the same. Supporting our local Pack-A-Backpack campaign helps children with much-needed school supplies and is fun, but that just isn't the same, either.

I would like to buy some brand-new crayons.

Is there anything comparable to an untouched box of 24 Crayola crayons? Those sharp points. That excellent variety of colors. The smell of those waxy little wands of creation. The box of 64 crayons always seemed excessive, even though it had that very cool crayon sharpener in the front. (Just to place me in the Crayola timeline, I remember when the box of 64 first came on the market. We were stunned by the available colors.)

I was always excited when my mother took us shopping for school supplies. There were no lists of required supplies in those days, so we just bought what everyone knew they needed for school. Packages of new pencils. New crayons. A new ruler (no centimeter markings then). A compass and a protractor, perhaps. A fat stack of looseleaf paper. A three-ring binder. Spiral notebooks if you were in a grade that needed them. A thick rubber book strap in later years (backpacks were for soldiers then, not students). Perhaps some fancy bookcovers, but generally we used brown paper bags to cover our books. A Shaeffer cartridge pen with ink cartridges of washable blue. That covered everything, I think.

When I was teaching, I still had the pleasure of buying supplies: new pens, packages of pencils which I could lend (!) my students, new grade books, new lesson plan books, markers, cellophane tape, paper clips, staples, thumb tacks, and folders. I loved office supply stores.

Unfortunately, I still have stocks of these 'teacher' supplies in my basement office. I seldom use up all the ink in my Zebra pens. No possible way to justify a rampage through Office Depot or Staples this year. But I have a plan.

Recently, I have read that artists are publishing coloring books for adults. These books look fairly elaborate and complicated and deserve being labeled as art. But they are coloring books. And I could color in them. Granted, they seem to require extensive palettes of markers or colored pencils, which I don't yearn for in the same way as crayons. I don't see why I couldn't use some good old Crayolas if I wanted to.

My secret is out now. I am going to order one of these high-end coloring books and buy a new box of crayons. This means I can consider myself a patron of the arts for supporting the business ventures of actual artists, and I can satisfy my inner second grader with those new Crayolas. Sounds good to me.

[Oh, yes: I am also going to begin stockpiling crayons for my grandchildren. And coloring books. The fun is going to begin again.]


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