Growing up as a child, I always loved to color (colour, even). It was soothing and lethargic. Nothing chased the blues away quicker than those magnificent crayons. The smell of cheap wax brings about nostalgia do this day.

The greatest feeling was cracking open that brand new coloring book and flipping through it, finding that one perfect page that was just begging to be colored.

Such magnificent hues! The pinks! The blues! The reds!

The black! I adored the black crayon above all. There was something about it, the way it could be incorporated into any picture, and still look good, that appealed to my senses. And it was all about pressure, wasn't it? Slight indentations would give you a scratchy gray (or grey, if you will). Bold pressing would give you the darkest of the dark. Made a coloring boo-boo? Blackify it! That picture of Barbie not goth enough? Hooray for black! Black's counterpart, noir, could always be counted on, if you wanted to sound continental.

I think coloring boxes should come with two black crayons.

I'm tired of the black crayon always dying first.

One day in kindergarden we did a special art project. We scribbled pages of paper with all the colours of the rainbow, then covered the page with black ink. Then we scratched pictures into the ink and we could see the bright colours under the balck. It was my favorite project.

In grade one we had to keep a journal. Everyday we drew pictures in our journals, and I would try to replicate the earlier project by scribbling over the other colours with my black crayon. It didn't work, and my teacher soon called my mother to tell her that I was a depressed and disturbed child and I needed immediate psychiatric help. My mother yelled at her that I was just expressing my grief over my parents recent divorce. Neither of them asked me why all the pages of my journal were scribbled black.

Kids have reasons for the weird stuff they do!

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