Crayon: (n) pointed stick or pencil of colored clay, chalk, wax, etc., used for drawing or coloring.

Elaborate was my plan.

Yes, many details, pieced together, far beyond my five years of life.

I loved crayons. But my mother never bought me a box that had more than twelve—and then, she never purchased the actual Crayola unit, which was so recognizable to my friends. So sometimes I showed up to play with our coloring books with my white box of eight crayons and they asked me, “Don’t you have crayons?”

It was mean. They could see that I had crayons—they just knew mine were “fake” and I was one of those kids who couldn’t afford “real” Crayolas.

I can remember like it was yesterday the first time I saw the gigantic container holding sixty-four crayons.

It was huge.

You couldn’t even use all the crayons—each hue pleaded for attention.

Fortunately for me, my friend allowed me to borrow from his pack of sixty-four, leaving me nearly teary-eyed and completely breathless. I never wanted to leave his home. After all, this was a house that contained the ultimate box of crayons, with sixty-four different opportunities.

Yet what started out as a pleasurable journey into the world of color ended up with me envious and angry.

So when my friend wasn’t looking, I reached in and took out six of my favorite colors from the pack and stuck them in the front pocket of my pants. To make sure he wouldn’t miss the crayons and there wouldn’t be a gap in the order as they stood like little soldiers in a row, I inserted some Kleenex into the slot and squished the crayons together, hoping to disguise the absence of the stolen six.

It worked.

He packed up the crayon box, put it away, and an hour later my mother came and picked me up.

Now, it was the next morning that my friend’s mother called my mother and asked if I knew anything about “missing crayons.”

I did but I wasn’t going to tell them.

The subject was dropped. They decided to take me at my word.

It would have been the perfect crime had it not been for the fact that I forgot to remove the crayons from the pocket of my pants, and my mother washed them in the machine—only to come out of the laundry room screaming over the messy, sloppy and smeary result.

I not only lost my crayons—I not only was unable to use what I had stolen—but the evidence of my guilt was now clearly melted all over my trousers.

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