Rita Hutchinson
July 31, 2008
Helen Ann Hebert Martin
August 4, 2008“Ahhh, I love the smell of crayons in the morning!”
Grade schoolteachers across the Tri-parishes, hands on their hips, confident and rested from their summer sojourns glance around the room, studying their young troops as they prepare to do battle. Well, maybe not. But when I was young, my teachers reminded me of characters out of “Apocalypse Now” – fierce, frightening and maybe just a bit off kilter when it came to ABCs and addition.
The crayons themselves, however, are a fond memory.
We weren’t limited to the 24-count pack and, by third grade, the 100-color Crayola box with its mystical Carnation Pink, Burnt Sienna and Midnight Blue separated the “have’s” from the “have not’s.”
No one cared whose shoes you were wearing or what icon was on your sweater. But if you were packing a box of 100 Crayons – especially the kind with the built-in sharpener on the side – you were “somebody.”
My 14-year-old asks me today what my favorite part of grade school was and I flash back to Mrs. Taylor’s first-grade classroom. My stack of fresh supplies tucked into my desk, an alphabet tablet and fat number two pencil at the ready, and Mrs. Taylor – my own Lt. Colonel Kilgore – at the front of the class, I was a worthy soldier … even if my handwriting still sucks.
No question, for a grade schooler, supplies rock! Classes, not so much. But paste drying in your hand to simulate peeled skin … that is as timeless as Crayola itself.
It’s that memory teamed with the burning wish that summer would last forever – another carry-over from childhood – that greets me each August. It’s that child within, too, that’s excited to see the Tri-parishes has a great lineup of post-summer fun for those of us who refuse to get back to the grind. Enjoy.
– Shell Armstrong
