In a Box of Crayons (Children & Art)

In a box of crayons, I am the orange. Who are you?

Ok, I believe that each of us can be represented by at least one crayon. I know for myself, I am definitely not a pink, or a brown, though I do like nature and the earth.

Children and art belong together, just as they need to be read to aloud, and to learn as many words as they can in fun ways that they remember.

The following story illustrates the imagination of a child when that imagination is squashed so to speak.

My mother, like a good number of other mothers in my day, put me into a summer Bible school. Now this was fine if we were church goers, but we were not, and I really did not know much about the Bible. So on one of the first days, the teacher asked us all to color pictures of Joseph and Mary that she gave us. We each had colors, and I just assumed that this was meant to be a creative exercise.

But when my little hand picked up a crayon and began to color Joseph’s hair orange, the teacher slapped the crayon out of my hand with a firm “Joseph’s hair is brown, not orange.” I quietly waited for her to leave my spot as I picked up the brown and began to peel it as though it needed to be peeled.

Moments later, the teacher had to go down the hall to the office. Now in those days, it was not against the law to leave the children alone in a classroom and we did not have aides in our classroom. We were alone – all alone.

Bored beyond measure, I picked up my pair of children’s scissors and began to pretend to cut my eyebrows. Soon all the other children began to cut their eyebrows, or pretend to as well. And one little girl got really carried away and was cutting her braid. As we giggled ourselves silly, the teacher walked back in. Outraged at what she saw, she said in her hornblower voice, “Who showed you to do this?” And all those little fingers pointed right at me. I tried to look around, but to no avail.

She marched over to my table, grabbed me by the hair, and got me up and marching to the office. Once there, she called my mother and told her that I could no longer be in HER class, for I could not follow instructions and was a troublemaker. So that was it. I was going home. Maybe there ARE miracles in this world.

My mother was furious with me, of course, so I got sent to my room . . . where I had a box of crayons and coloring book. I sat and colored the hair of each person in the coloring book orange . . .