And people wonder why I am concerned about our future and for the youths of America.

Now I just want to preface this post with the fact that I do not have kids and am scared of them, I never know what they are up to and they are suspect. Anyway please do not take any offense to the idiocy I am about to spout, I am sorry if this one offends you. My wife and I are, even though we never had any tricycle motors (kids), avid coloring book fans. Bride is more of a colored pencil artist while I work exclusively in Crayola’s. We are beyond the 64 pack with the built in pencil sharpener, which never worked very well and was, in my opinion, wasteful - it had to create that signature Crayola lip that is right above the tapered point. We have a big Crayola cigar box overflowing with crayons, many sets from small to large to specialty editions.

My current working canvas is a Sponge Bob Square Pants book, coloring books have changes as well and I am not sure I like it. This particular book is more of a story book, in six parts, and I feel that it stifles me, creatively speaking. This book not only has a story written across the top of each page the same characters flow from one page to the next in similar scenes. I do not like the printed story distracting the viewer from experiencing my art, my best pieces are displayed in our home. I have a Dora the Explorer coloring book that is similar, with the printed story across the pages. I also have a couple of the large coloring books, they measure 13.5 x 19.5 inches and are printed on smoother paper. These are double edged swords for me, I prefer the newsprint type paper over the smoother paper. I feel the way the crayola disperses on newsprint type paper is much softer and offers a more consistent spread of the crayon. The smoother paper is usually a little tougher and it allows for rubbing with the finger to properly blend in colors to perfectly match my minds-eye.

So we have colored for about as long as we have been hanging out together, about 20 years and I have always used crayola’s. They started with 8 colors in 1908 and did not step up to 48 until after World War Two. It was not until the late 50’s that the available colors moved up to 64, and the next step up to 72 happened in 1972, these 8 new colors were florescent. In 1990 the names of the fluorescents were changed and 8 more colors were added moving us to 80. In 1990 they retired 8 colors and came out with 8 new ones keeping the count at 80 until 1993 when they added 16 more new colors jumping us to 96 total. In 1998 24 new colors were added bring us to 120 colors of the simple Crayola crayons. In 2003 4 additional colors were retired and replaced with 4 new colors, the count stayed at 120. I had no problems with any of the additions or retirement of colors throughout the years, some I liked better than others but I was color agnostic about it really.

In 2008 is when things spun off the rails, in my opinion, at Crayola. They have surveyed over 20,000 kids and these kids told them what their 8 favorite colors were. They then put those 8 colors into the 50th anniversary 64 pack, this was the introduction to the 8 “kids choice” colors. This is when I started to wonder what in the heck are we teaching our kids in school? Let me explain, the 8 new colors are called, 1) Awesome 2) Giving Tree 3) Famous 4) Fun in the Sun 5) Best Friends 6) Super Happy 7) Happy ever after and 8) Bear hug. I was the gracious recipient of that 50th anniversary 64 pack with the built in sharpener as a present and that is where I found these 8 anomalous Crayola’s. someone needs to know that not one of those is a color, what is going on with our kids. The only one you might guess is the color Giving Tree, it is green. So I thought I would investigate a bit at the Crayola site and find out what in the world was going on with these colors.

So after a bit of searching I found the definitions of those colors and here they are. Awesome – kids feel great about doing well in school. Giving tree – Kids want to help protect the planet. Fun in the Sun – outdoor activities are fun for kids. Best friends – kids love having fun with their parents, their best friends. Super happy – kids want everyone’s dreams to come true. Happy ever after – Kids want everyone’s story to be a happy one. Bear hug – Kids want their homes to feel like a warm cozy bear hug. What kind of crap is that, aside from having BS explanations (I did not think like that as a kid, cozy bear hug my ass) they are not colors! According to the web site “What does COLOR mean to you?” is more important than using the names of what the rest of the real world uses to describe things. I get the question, “what does color mean to you” and I feel it is a critical question, how we feel about things and what they mean to us defines who we are as humans making our way in the world. Those feelings and meanings are however NOT COLORS, why can’t we teach our kids the difference between those things and have them pick actually colors. When I was a kid I used to call things whatever I wanted to call them, it created a lot of problems for me and my parents until I was thought that each thing had a name that the rest of society recognized as assigned to that object. It made my life easier after I learned that.

Anyway if you, or your kids have these eight colors in there palette of Crayola’s please tell them the truth or at least take them out so they won’t be exposed to the lie.