A good way for
poor kids to pass the time.
When I was very small, we had not much
money to buy
dolls and such. I only had two of my own that I cared anything for: a stuffed
rabbit in
overalls which my aunt had procured for me from a
flea market and
Black Dolly, a sparsely haired doll that my cousins used to
kidnap and
torture mercilessly. With no kids my age in the
neighborhood to
play with and a shortage of new and interesting
toys to keep me busy, I was often
left to my own devices for finding amusement about the house.
Crayons saved my ass from
maddening boredom many a time.
Aside from being neat
drawing utensils, crayons make excellent
substitute dolls for the
financially challenged youngster. You can peel off their paper covering to
mix and match outfits. The really used up and short ones can be the
children while the taller ones serve well as
moms and
dads. Sometimes it is
favorable to break the tips off and...
voila! a newborn crayon baby. If you are especially
deft with your hands, you can carve little faces in the
wax with your fingernail.
Crayon families are cool because they are
interestingly diverse. Everyone in a crayon family is a different color (kind of like my own family.) With a whole box, towns are born. Blue crayons become
cops or
mailmen(for mail, just rip off more bits of paper covering and you've got a bunch of letters, ready to be delivered.) You can chip off bits of the
silver and
gold for
currency. Pinks can be
ballerinas. Browns and greens become
forest rangers. The white crayon becomes the friendly
albino next door. Black crayons can be judges. And if you scrape off a bit of the white crayon and mush it on the black crayon's head you've got yourself a member of
parliament.
I really spent hours doing this when I was little. I had whole functioning cities going on in my crayon box. I did it with rocks too; kind of like
pet rocks only with a little more
intellect.