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.
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Help someone smile today. It can not hurt you.
Snook
All photos are mine unless otherwise stated
All photos of school supplies were taken from the Target Website.
I don't know how I managed to miss this post two weeks ago, but I did. I love your reminiscing about school, and life, and crayons! Within the past few years I splurged and bought myself a box of 96 Crayola crayons!! No, I don't live in a mansion; I'm just retired and can afford to buy crayons now. My uncle used to sit and color pictures in my coloring book with me. He colored very slowly and very nicely. I was impressed. And that is one of my fondest childhood memories.
Thank You so much for sharing that memory with me!!
I am very happy to know that you own a 96 box of Crayola crayons :D I do not think the love of crayons ever leaves us.
Aww this is beautiful Snook. I had crayons as a kid and I use to eat them. The never tasted good and I always spit itout but I always hoped that "today would be the day they'll realise that these things are too.pretty to not be edible as well". Never happened, and even until.todsy, crayons still taste like shit. 😆
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You cracked me up!!
You need to stop eating crayons!! :D
You are a very handsome adult now and some lovely lady might not understand your need to test out the taste of crayons now that you're older!
Yet....... If you found a woman that found that funny then you have a keeper :D
The mystery of crayons can tell you so much about a person!!
Crayon manufacturers need to sit up and fix the taste before my fiance moves in with me 😄
hahahaha, yes getting beaten up for not sharing was the thing back then
You know, my youngest just finished his primary years and so I packed all the school stuff he wouldn't need anymore - I gave away bags of crayons and colouring pencils (4 kids worth that got passed down and added to over the years). Some were brand new.
I did keep some colouring pencils because I do like to colour but crayons... I do find them messy though I loovveeee how the colours pop but still - I gave them all away
I like colored pencils now too.
crayons are pretty but very hard to stay in the lines with :D
Plus when you have grandkids you can buy them new crayons and people will think they live in a palace too!!
<33
Well. I was thinking of many things this morning but I have to admit that crayon protocol was not one of them.
I honestly do not remember when I first took crayons to school. I think maybe 2nd or 3rd grade. Until then everybody dipped a crayon out of a huge tub of mostly broken pieces.
I do remember that Pam Walter got hollered at in kindergarten for not coloring the same way for the whole picture. We were coloring a rabbit (hers was green. One piece of crayon per customer) and after she had done the bottom half of the rabbit horizontally she turned the page 90 degrees and started doing the back half vertically (horizontally relative to her). The teacher lost her mind and hollered. Then she took Pam and the rabbit to the front of the room and showed everybody why she was such a dumb ass and how could she be that stupid? It wasn't pretty. 65 years ago and I still remember it well. I'll bet she does too.
We had crayons at home. Coloring was a good foul weather distraction for my brother and I. We didn't even have TV that mom could just set us down in front of. I don't think crayons got to 'venerated' status until my sisters started in (they are 7 and 10 years younger than me).
I used crayons to diagram a really complex circuit for something or other when I was in the eighth grade. I don't know if the shop teacher was more impressed with my ability or just the fact that I could use my sister's crayons.
Loved how you put this!! It was perfect. Made me smile too. Thank You!!
Your teacher was a very bad, bad, bad, bad word. Lots of bad words. I can relate to your friend Pam too cuz I would always mix up the spelling of their and there and the teacher huge the words above my desk for a whole year.
Anyway.....
I am thinking a bit of both from the Teacher LOLL
I hope your week is going fabulous!!
Bwahahahaaa! We had some with that big round 96 pack too. I was kind of envious of those kids. 🤣
The 96 pack with the sharpener? and some kids didn't let you use their sharpener.........
insert bad word
LOLLLLLLLLLL
HUGS
Yes! OMG, those were the kids that got beat up 😂
Oh, my! What memories. I remember being given - in a tin - a box a gazillion Faber Castel pencil crayons. I loved them. Actually, I think my Dad wanted them more. He used to colour in with me... Wax, I remember from school and from other girls who must have lived in palaces the boxes were so big.
Happy Tuesday!
I bought my son lots of things I wanted as a kid and couldn't have LOLL so I totally get that :D
I love thinking of you coloring with your Dad. I am so happy I was able to bring that memory to the forefront for you!!
Many HUGS!!!
🤗
Snooks fond memories of Crayola crayons
those are way too new to be my crayons LOLL
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