Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have never confessed before, and this confession will not be a thorough one. I should begin by making it clear to you, Father: I do not believe in God, but I do believe in right and wrong, and what I did the day before yesterday at the toy store was wrong. The small satisfaction I gleaned from saving myself some time and money has been outweighed by the disappointment of the innocent child who will suffer from my selfish misdeed.
But first, my defense:
At twenty-two months of age, my budding artist favors “Large” crayons. We call them fat ones and we refer to the regular size crayons as skinny ones. In the two months since he has been introduced to drawing, (or as his unforgiving aunt says, scribbling) he has worn through three 8-packs of fat ones, one 24-pack of skinny ones, two 16-packs of glittery skinny ones, one 16-pack of scented skinny ones, two 8-packs of large, plastic-encased colored pencils, and five assorted skinny siennas sent to him by his grandmother and apparently singled out by the post office for ill-treatment as they arrived in many small pieces, despite her loving request for extra special care.
When he colors, the rest of the world falls away from him, except of course for his devoted aid and enrapt audience, Mommy. He refuses to eat or drink. He cannot be tempted away from his canvas for any other toy, book, or activity. He colors so furiously that he wears the paper-wrapper away by dint of sheer pressure before I can peel it back from the tip. He pauses to complain only when he needs fresh paper or when he has broken a crayon. On occasion he will demand that I draw him something, usually a hippo or a whale with sharp teeth. As he watches me draw, he rolls his own crayon back and forth between his palms, just like my fourth grade teacher used to do with her chalk as she spoke to the class. It is unusual for me to finish because he snatches the crayon from my hand and appropriates the drawing.
His favorite crayon color is brown and his favorite crayon size is fat. Once he went through an entire fat brown crayon in a single day. As the crayon shrinks, there is less and less paper to protect the nub from his moist palm. The wax warms and spreads easily on the brown builders’ paper that we use, a heavy weight usually put down by contractors to protect new floors. When the crayon becomes too small, less than one inch, he will not use it. If he cannot find an immediate replacement, he becomes frustrated and threatens, “Throw it!” to which I implore, “Please don’t!” after which he gives it a deliberate toss and cries out, “Fall down!” whereupon he deliberately lowers himself to the ground, taking extra care with the back of his head, and calls to me, “My baby crying!”
So, we have been out of fat brown crayons for a week or so. I set him up to color and he came to me after only a few minutes, heartbroken:
“Where, oh where is fat brown, Mommy? I don’t see it anywhere. Oh dear, where brownie?”
I offered him skinny ones, which made him angry, as did the small remainders of two fat browns. We needed a new pack of fat crayons to unlock the artist.
We went to the toy store for the fresh pack. In the arts and crafts section, they had one box of Jumbo crayons in stock—these were about four times the size of the “Large” ones we had been using and, in our ignorance, calling fat! I opened the box and three tips were broken off. I scanned the shelves for any misplaced Jumbo boxes, but we ended up with our usual box.
I stood there in the aisle, holding the box of crayons and looking at the price tag on the shelf, and I thought to myself, “We are going to be back here in less than a week. And, what are we going to do with another yellow?”
And then I glanced to my left: empty aisle and no black bubble cameras on the ceiling. I glanced to my right: a mother and child about thirty feet away, walking toward us. I said out loud to my son, “OK baby, we’re almost ready, just have to make sure these tips aren’t broken off too. Just like checking eggs at the grocery store.”
With that I opened two packs, said, “Oh dear, it’s a good thing we checked,” and I switched out a yellow for a brown.
I considered the worst case scenario, that the cashier would check the box at the register. Unlikely, I decided, that had never happened before in all of my crayon purchases. My heart was steady as I completed the purchase. It was only when I got home that I considered the child and mother on the receiving end of my deception and theft. The poor dears will open the fresh pack only to confront two fat yellows and no fat browns.
The worst of it is, Father, I can never go back to buying a mark’s pack of crayons again. Next time, I’m going for a half-pack of fat brown.
No comments:
Post a Comment