Categories > Original > Drama
Today, you stand near the front door to the restaurant that you work at, if you can call it a restaurant. You've opened a small cardboard box that weighs maybe a few pounds. Inside, are hundreds of crayons. There's only 4 colors, blue, red, orange, and green. They break so easily, and their points grow blunt with just a few strokes of color.
Now, you're putting them into a small plastic cup on the podium that holds the menus and children's menus. They're destined to go to whiny brats for them to color with while they wait. They always complain if they have to share with a sibling, or don't get all the colors, even though by the time they leave, the crayons will be broken and blunted on the ground. By the end of the day, the busboy will have swept nearly half the box into his dustpan, and from there, into the garbage. But for now, they sit in their plastic cup, just waiting for the next customer.
As crappy as these crayons are, this time last year, you would have killed for these crayons, even if they would've gone blunt within minutes of being used, and may have even snapped because of the lightest pressure that your shaking hands put on them. But compared to the crayons that they had back in the hospital, these are the holy grail. Those were broken, often just stubs, and so dirty that you couldn't tell what color they were originally. They were also always so blunt that they were round, and you couldn't find a single edge to write with. You had thought wryly that the orderlies took the 'no sharp objects' rule to the extreme, and had stayed up all night just to rub all the crayons down into nothingness. Some of your story notes from that time you couldn't interpret, because of how poor your writing utensils were. You had written on the back of coloring sheets and activities sheets in whatever you could get your hands on.
These days, you can barely remember that time, preferring instead to put it out of your mind. You never want to think about it again. So you continue to work at your menial job, and as your hands place the little wax sticks into their home for the next few hours, the thought flashes through your head that you would have loved these last year, but you don't know where it comes from, and part of your doesn't want to know.
Maybe it's affected you more than you know in the past year. After all, you frequently catch yourself wishing you had a crayon instead of a pen when you're writing, and at work, you prefer writing the orders down with a crayon.
This little piece of work is for Vennession. Really, if you prefer crayons to pens, why not stop wishing and just buy a box?
Now, you're putting them into a small plastic cup on the podium that holds the menus and children's menus. They're destined to go to whiny brats for them to color with while they wait. They always complain if they have to share with a sibling, or don't get all the colors, even though by the time they leave, the crayons will be broken and blunted on the ground. By the end of the day, the busboy will have swept nearly half the box into his dustpan, and from there, into the garbage. But for now, they sit in their plastic cup, just waiting for the next customer.
As crappy as these crayons are, this time last year, you would have killed for these crayons, even if they would've gone blunt within minutes of being used, and may have even snapped because of the lightest pressure that your shaking hands put on them. But compared to the crayons that they had back in the hospital, these are the holy grail. Those were broken, often just stubs, and so dirty that you couldn't tell what color they were originally. They were also always so blunt that they were round, and you couldn't find a single edge to write with. You had thought wryly that the orderlies took the 'no sharp objects' rule to the extreme, and had stayed up all night just to rub all the crayons down into nothingness. Some of your story notes from that time you couldn't interpret, because of how poor your writing utensils were. You had written on the back of coloring sheets and activities sheets in whatever you could get your hands on.
These days, you can barely remember that time, preferring instead to put it out of your mind. You never want to think about it again. So you continue to work at your menial job, and as your hands place the little wax sticks into their home for the next few hours, the thought flashes through your head that you would have loved these last year, but you don't know where it comes from, and part of your doesn't want to know.
Maybe it's affected you more than you know in the past year. After all, you frequently catch yourself wishing you had a crayon instead of a pen when you're writing, and at work, you prefer writing the orders down with a crayon.
This little piece of work is for Vennession. Really, if you prefer crayons to pens, why not stop wishing and just buy a box?
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