Crayons

This post all started when I was following a link my friend Jim had posted on Twitter. I'm never one to just read what's put in front of me--I go off following other links in the post. Which led me here. And that got me to thinking about our family and restaurant crayons.

Calli is 13, almost 14--that's in years, not months. Soon we will no longer be offered crayons at the restaurants. Which is sad. Because our family is demented and always writes or draws bizarre things with our crayons.

One time we tried to remember the seven deadly sins--I can't even remember why. We don't go to church. The girls attend public schools. Hmmm, my Becky's class might have been discussing the bible in her English class. But with our trusty crayons we came up with an acronym to remember them all: SPAGGLE. (Sloth, pride, anger, gluttony, greed, lust, and envy.) Now isn't that a cool word, SPAGGLE? Becky wrote all this out on her placemat. By the end of our discussion I was crying because I was laughing so hard. I almost peed my pants. (There's a little TMI for ya!) For quite some time after that we would leave our poor waitperson placemats with SPAGGLE emblazoned on it. Beware the deadly sins! And I would go into gales of laughter every time. In a restaurant. I'm sure those at surrounding tables just loved us.

Or what about the period of time when Rick decided to recycle our crayons? This really was a neat idea. Why should all those barely-used crayons go to waste. So he would gather them up and bring them home and toss them in a box. We gathered hundreds of crayons--usually in just 4 colors. I can't even remember what we did with them. I think they went to a school or the church. (Yeah, just last paragraph I claimed we didn't go to church. We weren't at the time of SPAGGLE and we don't now. But for a few years we did go to one church...) This saving-of-the-crayons lasted for a while, but eventually fell by the wayside.

Then there was the time that we took a roadtrip somewhere. We were eating at a lot of restaurants. And often at the same chain. (Ironically at the same chain where we would later give birth to SPAGGLE!) And every time we ate at one of those restaurants, they would be out of crayons. It was like a conspiracy. My husband decides to complain about the lack of crayons--while complaining about something really worth it, like lousy service or bad food. I forget now how he complained. Might have been through their website. Or he might have written a column on it for the newspaper. It's been too long. But the really funny part is that the restaurant sent him a letter apologizing for the lack of crayons. And then gave him a big old honking box of Crayolas--like the 64 or 96 count box. Suck ups.

Calli likes to draw things for us. But she often can't think of what to draw. I will inevitably suggest "pigs" to her. So we have left a trail of pigs at many restaurants.

And we play endless games of tic-tac-toe.

Sigh. I'm going to miss getting those crayons when Calli just looks too old to qualify for those kid's menus. We will just have to rely on Rick's trusty pen that he always carries in his pocket to write out things like SPAGGLE on our placemats. But it just won't be the same!