When I was seven my parents bought me boxes of Crayola colored chalk. I was always the
art fag of the family (big surprise, huh? I'll dance to anything) and loved anything that
involved clay, paint... anything. I got large thick sheets of
construction paper with rough edges, deep shades of red, dark blues, some
browns and a few yellow. The chalk showed up stark against the
textured surface and I loved the contrast between the coarse paper and
smooth color. Whenever I was through drawing I was covered with
chalk. My drawings, crude as they were, were smudged and blurry from
where my tiny, eager fingers smeared the colors together to make more
interesting shades and patterns. I used to use white under other
colors to make the blues and reds and greens softer and deeper... I
still don't know if this was ever the right thing to do but I did it anyway
- I think my perception was that it worked EXACTLY the way I
intended...
Proud of my gifts, I took one of the unopened boxes to school with me
so I could us the pristine sticks there... they were perfect
cylinders of color and crisp... I loved the way new sticks felt in
my hands and I asked my teacher if I could use them to color on the chalk
board. I was almost too short to reach more than a foot above the lip
of the board but she wouldn't let me use them because it would be too much
trouble to clean.
I don't remember the name of the kid that grabbed the unopened box out
of my hand and threw it hard to the tiled floor - shattering the perfect
sticks - but I do remember that I went to the bathroom and blubbered about
them for a quite a while. I was just so surprised...
horrified... hurt... I don't remember if he was punished for being
such a shit, but I remember that she let me stand on a chair and draw to
my heart's content every morning before class started for the entire week
. Only one stick survived the impact intact and I used it until it was
only a tiny nub...