Crayon Crimes

A box of new crayons! Now they're all pointy, lined up in order, bright and perfect. Soon they'll be a bunch of ground down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps, missing their wrappers and smudged with other colors. Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic. ~Bill Watterson

Aren't they beautiful? I love a box of new crayons. I'm sure you do, too. How could you not?

And the opening quote is, as we all know, only too accurate. Most children just don't have the proper respect for a brand new box of crayons. The contents of my crayon box looks more like this:


And the sad truth is, my youngest son chews, and sometimes ingests, crayons. Yes, Dawson. Yes, ingests. Yes, I do have proof.

They're non-toxic. That's what everyone keeps telling me when I lament a crayon's --ahem--passing. (No, not an entire crayon. But let me assure you, it doesn't take much to make a vibrant showing.) Non-toxic, which also means "non-digestible."

It just seems like such a waste. They don't taste good, and with the lovely pointed tips bitten off, they're just not so adorable anymore.

I try to stop him. I really don't like wiping crayon fragments off my son's rear end. Surely I care more than anyone else in the house, right? But with three other oblivious children playing with a HUGE box of crayons, there's bound to be plenty of them that end up on the floor.

And now that Dawson can make it to the top of the table, all bets are off.