Crayons

We've all experienced the pure joy of a brand new box of crayons. Bright and vivid colors, with nice sharp points, clearly defining their color names on the wrappers that hug them tight. Alas, crayons do not stay fresh and sharp forever. Little hands, gripping them so tightly can snap them right in two and then you have two not-so-perfect reds, or blues, or greens. Sometimes, it is the crayon that is used the most that breaks first.

However, as long as all the crayons are present, we can still make a pretty fine picture. It takes all the colors.

Yellow for the bright and happy sun. Red for the delicious apples and bright little boats. White for those nice highlights on everything and black to give the whole picture more definition, shading and interest.

Our country has become a box of crayons.......we have all the primary colors represented along with some nice hybrid colors that happened by mixing together a few other shades and hues. We have a glorious array of beautiful faces in all colors, all religions, all races, all lifestyles. And, I dare say, most of the people I know who are my age ceased to see a clear difference in "color" a long time ago. We were raised by people who saw color very distinctly and were pretty danged vocal about it. But my generation was smart and we learned that there were broken crayons of EVERY color in our box, but there were also some very beautiful and wonderful bright happy ones represented there as well and we colored with our box with wild abandon.

Now....suddenly...we are being asked to only see one shade of crayon. We are being told that if that crayon is broken it matters more than any other color in the box. In fact, maybe we should take all our other crayons and break them in order to make it up to that one broken crayon.

I am afraid if something doesn't change very soon, one of our crayons will be cast aside forever and then our pictures will no longer be as pretty, no longer be bright and vivid and full of hope and promise.

So....what color crayon are you? When you color with only yourself, is the picture pretty or kind of flat and uninteresting? Hopefully, we can get back to a place where all crayons have an equal slot in the box without having to toss out a color or two just because one of them was not colored with well in the past.