I decided that Alison was finally old enough to be trusted, unsupervised, with crayons. After all, she is three. She can talk in complete sentences, and eighty percent of the time, she can wash her hands when she is finished eating without being reminded. And I've certainly never caught her trying to eat crayons as I did James. Yet, with multiple crayons in her hands, the house was Alison's canvas. Chairs, walls, doors, floors, dolls, even Philip's diaper...the carnage seemed endless, along with the clean up. So, the crayons are once again being stored out of Ali's unsupervised reach.
Over on my bookshelf sits the box of 96 Crayola crayons that doomed Ali to a lengthy timeout. Looking at the box, I think back to the box of 64 crayons I had when I went to school. Sixty-four seemed extravagant when I was small. It's a lot of work keeping 64 crayons organized and sharpened. I just don't think my children, in today's busy and hectic world, have enough time to care for 96 crayons. As I read over the names of some of the new crayons, like Hot Magenta and Laser Lemon, it seems as though Crayola should have stopped at 75, tops. These new names and colors can't compete with the old ones, like Raw Umber, which is certainly not an intuitive color, but it does sound very ominous: "Raw Umber will destroy you and everything you hold dear." I do, however, appreciate the new metallic colors, such as Steel Blue and Cyber Grape, because I love things that sparkle (diamonds, rubies, ice cubes, glitter, broken bits of glass, etc.).
For those Crayola fans out there, Wikipedia has a list of the standard Crayola crayon colors, along with the hex codes and RGB numbers for the colors.
Sadly, Raw Umber was retired as a crayon color in 1990. But thanks to computers and hex codes, Raw Umber can now color my Photoshop creations as it did my school creations. Actually, Raw Umber was more of a bench warmer color, but it might be time to look past its name and let it tint and sketch. Hey, maybe Crayola will reincarnate it as a metallic sparkle crayon, and it will glitter on through the ages.
Comments
Post a Comment