A Little Crayon Therapy

(written in 2001, taken from my archives)

I was having a bad day at work the other day and decided I was in need of a little “crayon therapy.” What is “crayon therapy” you may ask? It’s a de-stressing exercise my friend invented while we were in college.

Whenever we got bogged down with studying and needed a little diversion, we would pull out our coloring books and crayons and color away until we felt able to cope with studying again.

I’ve been out of college just over seven years now, so I’ve since gotten rid of most of my coloring books and crayons. In fact, last Christmas I gave my three-year-old niece an unopened 96 box of crayons. Before giving it to her I thought to myself, “When am I ever going to use these?”

Now I wish I had kept them, because after going to every stationer and lots of other shops in our small town I came up empty. Out of all the stores I visited, only one actually sold crayons, but they were a cheap knock-off brand. Not only did they not smell like the old Crayolas we all know and love, they didn’t even have the names of the colors listed on the wrappers. Now what fun is that I ask you, to not know that you’re using burnt sienna or sea blue? That’s how we all learned our colors.

Disappointed I slumped off back to work to rejoin the adult world once again.