map colors

When I started the third grade in Tyler, Texas (something I've talked about at length in a previous post), one of the things on my school supply list was "a set of map colors."

I can remember going to Brookshires (by Bergfled, the choicest grocery store in Tyler, before the creation of Brookshires Fresh, which is where I like to shop now because it is so swanky) with my mom, walking up and down the office supply aisle, looking for "map colors." It was the night before the first day of school, and we were picking out things for school lunches, and making a last attempt to find some dang map colors. They were the last things on my list, and dog gone it, we had no idea where to find them. We had been to craft stores, office stores, Target and Walmart, and there were no map colors to be found.

Flustered to a point previously unknown (because how often can you not find something on a school supply list for every third grader in a school district?) my mom went up to a teenage dude stocking rolls of tape down the aisle, and begged him to help us find map colors. This boy, obviously a Tyler native, tried very hard not to sound condescending when he said, "Oh, uh, ma'am, they're just right here."

He pointed to the boxes of colored pencils hanging up right in front of our faces.

"Those are map colors?"

"Uh, yes ma'am."

"But they're just colored pencils..."

"I think they're the same thing, ma'am. I'll ask my manager."

So then the manager, a very nice lady, came down the aisle to us and told us that yes, those were map colors. My mom was amazed. I was disappointed. This couldn't be right. "Map colors" sounded like something Christopher Columbus took in a special box with him to the New World to record all of his discoveries. The Crayola 12 pack was nothing new/special and Columbus definitely didn't have those.

In the end, we ended up getting a knock-off brand box of ten pencils that were severely inferior to the Crayola pack I could have gotten. They were waxy and terrible. But part of me felt like they were closer to map colors than Crayola pencils were... O, that imagination of mine.

Anyways, I had this big fat atlas assignment due today in my geography class, and last night while I was doing it (and this morning while I was finishing it) I felt like the quality of my work would automatically improve if I had map colors. So today I bought... the Crayola 12 pack.

Someday I will get Map Colors. I will keep them in a special box and take them exploring.

For now, the dang Crayolas will have to suffice.