Saturday, November 26, 2011

The View From The Aunthill

Seventh Niece is two-and-a-half years old and is working on learning colors. When she comes over to visit, we have a 16-pack of Crayola Pip-Squeaks* washable markers that she loves to use.

With sixteen colors to choose from, there are a few off-the-beaten-path colors in there. The beaten path, in my opinion, being the Crayola crayon 8-box: red, blue, yellow, green, purple, black, white, orange and brown. (Even after ten years of working in a flower shop where people willy-nilly threw around words like fuschia and puce, burgundy and wine, sage and celadon and debated the subtle differences between lavender and periwinkle, my motto where colors are concerned remains: If it ain't in the Crayola 8-box, I don't know what color it is.)

Anyway, Friday evening, while the grown-ups were playing poker, Second Niece was set up with her bowl of markers, doodling away. She leaned over toward me, holding a greenish blue marker in her hand and said, "I using this..."

I took her hesitation to mean she wanted me to tell her what color it was. So I said, "Green?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Uh, blue?" I guessed again.

Again with the "no," this time a little more frustrated.

Shot in the dark: "Teal?"

The look she gave me was one of annoyance mixed with the slightest hint of pity. She said, "No...it's a marker!"

She may have a way to go on her colors, but she's making amazing progress in the sarcasm department.

*An absolutely uncompensated thumbs-up to this product, by the way. They are the most washable washables I've ever come across.

4 comments:

  1. Brilliant! Sounds like my kind of girl.

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  2. 5-year veteran of the floral shop industry.

    What in tarnation is celadon???

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  3. Jane, it's a soft green--indistinguishable from sage in my opinion. I first saw the name used on a bolt of ribbon (the shop owner had a ribbon fetish like you would not believe) and shortly thereafter, several girls came in with prom dresses that color. I'm sure we could trade some floral stories (not to be confused with horror stories, except when they can).

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