A History Lesson.
The year is 1903. Some bored dudes, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith, decide to make and produce a crayon called Crayola.
The name "Crayola," coined by the wife of the company's founder, comes from "craie," French for "chalk," and "oleaginous," or "oily." ~Smithsonian
I am old-ish but not quite as old as Crayola crayons. We will then jump ahead a few years to the 1960s. I am familiar with this decade.
24 stunning colors all your own.
Crayons were one of the first messy toys you were allowed to use if you promised not to write on anything other than paper. No walls, no floor, and no orange carpeting should ever see colored wax on it.
Legend says every household had a metal coffee can filled with old used crayons passed down since 1902. Most of the colors in the old coffee can be in brown hues: each coffee can held one, and only one, pretty crayon. The pretty crayon was different for each household. In my house, we had the coffee can with the most stunning gold crayon.
There were many a fight over that beautiful gold crayon. The pretty gold crayon also taught you that you had to learn to share at a very early age. If you didn't share, you would get beaten up by your best friends for not sharing. A lesson lost on a lot of people today.
Were you born in a palace?
You finally got your first box of crayons when you were five years old and starting Kindergarten. You received a list from the teacher to bring in one eight-count box of jumbo crayons to school. Before school started, you wrote your name on each crayon. Okay, your Mom did because most of us could not write our own words at five years of age.
We knew our addresses and phone numbers if we got lost while outside playing. All you needed to know for the first five years of your life to stay safe.
Once you made it through a year of half-day Kindergarten where you learned to sit still and listen to your hairy-legged teacher read you a story. Get caught kissing the boy next door on a dare while the teacher read said story. And have to wear shoes every day. You then were able to move on with the skills taught you to first grade.
The joy of having your own sharpener is beyond explanation.
Upon entering first grade, you were to bring in a 24 pack of crayons along with a bottle of rubber cement. First grade was the year you found out who came from money and who didn't. If a person showed up with a box of 48 count crayons instead of the required 24 counts, you knew they lived in a palace.
The one great thing about knowing someone with a box of 48 count crayons was you could borrow a colored crayon you didn't have from them if you needed it. No one thought to say you couldn't borrow a crayon because we all learned at the age of two that if you didn't share, you got beat up.
And I am still alive today! 😹
To this day, I can spot a person that never had to share their crayons a mile away.
I think most people can look back at their childhood and have happy thoughts about crayons. I also think it is one reason that adult coloring has become so popular over the years. It is relaxing and brings back great memories from when you were a child.
If you find yourself stressed and bored, order yourself some colored pencils and a coloring book. You will be surprised at the beautiful feeling that washes over you when you sit down and start to color.
All photos are mine unless otherwise stated
All photos of school supplies were taken from the Target Website.
