One of this week’s giveaway questions – If you were a crayon, what color would you be? – is such a natural question for me (a child of the 50’s) to ask.

You see during the years when I was a kid; one of your most treasured possessions was your box of crayolas! Of course, this was in prehistoric times – just after the dinosaurs as I remember. 😉

Seriously though, when I was a pre-schooler, there was no color TV and most photos were black and white! It’s easy to understand why kids of my generation were crazy for crayons! Coloring was a major part of our entertainment, our self-expression, and even our social lives. We all had “special” techniques that we shared with our friends, like the art of subtle shading, or outlining, or how to peel the paper off just far enough to use the side of the crayon. We experimented with mixing colors and discovered that blending brown and yellow would make a cool shade of golden blond for the hair on a paper doll or the mane of a pony!

Crayons were thought to have a calming influence and they probably did – in the same way that sewing or painting or any creative activity is soothing. During rainy and snowy days, parents often handed coloring books and crayons to rambunctious children who were exhibiting the classic symptoms of cabin fever! In today’s high tech world, it may seem a little hard to believe that something so ordinary could be a fun way to spend an afternoon.

With crayons there was a logical progression. We all started with the crayola 8-pack – the fat ones at first until we developed some dexterity and then on to the standard slimmer ones. However, every kid I knew was absolutely desperate to own the crème de la crème of Crayolas: (drum roll, please) the 64-Pack! which had stadium seating for all those gorgeous colors and a sharpener, too!!! Woo hoo!

It was the expensive box though, and you’d probably have to wait for Christmas or a birthday to get it. I recently searched to see if I could find a list of the colors in that original 64-box. The Crayola website has a wonderful chart called the Crayola® Crayon Chronology. It shows which colors were available and which were discontinued or changed over a 100-year time frame, from 1903 to 2003.

Personally, I could never choose a favorite between blue violet and violet red. Maybe that’s why I’m so hooked on purple now! 🙂