Last week I wrote about wanting a box of crayons, out of sentimentality for school supply lists.

Which brought up a memory about my oldest kid, and her pre-school year.

See, she not only wanted to color outside the lines… she wanted to color with only the black crayon.

Somehow, this was disturbing to her pre-school teacher. Here we had this cute little girl, with Cindy-Lou Who pigtails, and big brown eyes, and a tiny delicate build, and an elfen-ish face, and freckles, and a cute sundress with big pink flowers on it… slashing away with the black crayon.

I guess the image of Preschooler-Goth got to the teacher, so… she took away Kath’s black crayon.

Who then stopped coloring.

Of course, I intervened. I said… hey, it’s not like she’s coloring only in black and saying “They’re baaaack.”) (I’d have said, hey, it’s not like she’s coloring only in black and saying, “I. See. Dead. People.” But the timing of that movie was after Kath’s pre-school days.) I said… hey, she’s not trying to line her eyes in black crayon. I said… hey, she’s not coloring on other kid’s papers. She’s not depressed. Or misbehaving. Or anti-social.

She… Just Wants To Color With The Black Crayon!

Everyone wanted to know why. I said, who cares? Everyone’s making too big a deal of this! Let’s give her back the black crayon and see what happens.

What happened, of course, was that she used up the black crayon.

And went on to color with all the other colors, then. And has turned out to be an excellent artist.

I asked her once if she remembered that (barely) or if she had a clue why she did that (none), so now we just call that her Black Crayon Period.

So… as writers (gotta make the analogy, right?)… maybe we all have Black Crayon Periods, where we don’t know why we’re exploring in one set mode, even as everyone around us is saying “eep! eep!” but, eventually, we work through that and come out on the other end more creative and, um, colorful than we would have without the Black Crayon Period.

Sure beats only coloring in the lines. Or as others expect us to. Or not at all.