Color Me Awesome!

The Crayola 64 pack of crayons turns 50 this year. Well, not my Crayola 64 pack, since it melted in the back window of my parent's 1981 Ford Granada. I had left them there after school one day and the hot afternoon sun reduced all 64 crayons into a multi-colored wax pancake with pieces of crayon wrappers stuck in it. Although I was disappointed to lose my crayons, I have to admit that the giant waxy mass in the back window was quite impressive, so impressive that I may have performed random, small scale experiments of one or two crayons on the back dash in the years that followed.

(So Mom, Dad, to answer your question of "Who did this?!?" it was me. Sorry about that.)

The Crayola 64 pack is the SUV of the crayon packages since its spectrum of colors offers much more versatility than the average user requires. If you want proof, just open any Crayola 64 pack in any elementary school across the country and you'll find the following: the green, red, black and blue crayons ground down to tiny nubs, the brown, yellow, grey and orange showing rounded tips from repeat use, the white crayon still with its factory sharpened tip, and the rest pretty much untouched (as is the built in sharpener on the front).

Even though you didn't use all of them, the 64 pack was a grade school necessity. No parent would dare send their child to class with an 8 pack or even the 16 pack, otherwise the other kids (and probably the teacher) would think you were poor. And no one was more maligned than the kid with generic or store brand crayons. In the class hierarchy, the generic crayon kid ranked lower than the kid who ate paste (generic paste at that). It's not surprising that a recent poll conducted by the RASMUS Institute (Random Statistics Made Up on the Spot) indicates that 97% of death row inmates used generic crayons during their formidable coloring years. Crayola should consider that in their next ad campaign:  Crayola - We keep your kids out of jail

To commemorate the 50th anniversary, Crayola has unveiled 8 new colors which will join the ranks of the 64 pack. Technically the colors aren't new per se, they just have new names. As much as I'd like to believe it, the truth is Crayola doesn't have a group of post-doctorate color scientists analyzing the color spectrum for gaps that would indicate the possibility of discovering a new blue. All the colors have been discovered, so all that's left is to give each hue it's own name.

The eight new colors which will be added into the 64 pack this year includes the following: Fun in the Sun, Super Happy, Giving Tree, Famous, Bear Hug, Happy Ever After, Best Friends and Awesome.

Go ahead and forget the first seven because, well let's be honest, lame (although I do foresee many elementary school girls breaking the Best Friends crayon in half and giving a piece to their best friend). Let us instead focus on the one color name they got right: Awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, we now know the color of awesome. That is truly awesome.

As someone who strives for awesomeness in my everyday life, I fully intend to embrace the color of awesome. I will begin by accenting my wardrobe to include more awesome colored clothing. I will also educate my kids so that when they draw my picture, they will use only the color awesome. I will eat awesome foods, read awesome books and occasionally watch awesome television. I will no longer paint the town red; I will paint the town awesome!

Oh, and my next car? Something in an awesome metallic flake paintjob. Preferably with a small rear dashboard to discourage my children from conducting their own crayon melting experiments.