Kindergarten. Yes yes, i know it's pretty far back in the reaches of memory, but what I do remember about those "golden days of carefree youth" is when we used to have these coloring exercises in preschool....or kindergarten, not really sure. But I remember they used to sit us little ones at a table and give us LOTS and LOTS of crayons with a picture of like an easter egg or bunny rabbit or something (in celebration of easter or whatever holiday was coming up) and tell us to color to our heart's content. Like any other normal five year old, I LOVED to color, even though I wasn't too great at it. The concept of coloring in the lines is still somewhat foreign to me and I'm now twenty years old, so you can imagine that little Christine wasn't the best colorer on the block. Anyway, I digress. =/ my point was, the teachers would put out a whole bucket of crayons, and then someone would dump them all on the table...my favorite was cerulean, I remember, because the c in it (and all the following jumble of letters) reminded me of the c in my name (which was also followed by a jumble of letters) *okay i admit, i also wasn't a very SMART little kid...I didn't know that l,m,n, and o were different letters in the alphabet until like...third grade...i would just sing...lemenop...thinking "emeno" was an EXTRA long letter* =)

ANYWAY...so like there would be some crayons that would be all shiny and pointy, virtually unused because they were either really ugly (like the color of mashed peas or something) or they were BRAND NEW. I'd always get this secret kindling of excitement within me when I saw the brand new ones...it reminded me of that special that they had on Sesame Street once...or maybe it was Reading Rainbow...anyway, some kids' show where they showed the process of making crayons. Like they took you inside this awesome crayon factory where they made HUGE blocks of rainbow colors...red, yellow, blue, green, pink, you name it, they had it. They'd show the cool transformation from liquid color in tubs to big blocks of colored wax and then the stamping of the crayons through the machines. I was just so awed by it...haha okok i was also a dork when i was a kid. I watched television specials about making crayons instead of cool stuff like...errr...power rangers or whatever, which maybe explains why i'm not too knowledgeable about the world. But hey, if you ask me how they make cheese or crayons, I'll be the first to tell you! *beam* =)

okay I digress AGAIN, sorry about that. where was I? Ohhh...yes, my overwhelming lust for the shiny bright new crayons. The moment that the crayons were poured onto the table, there would always be one kid whose grubby little fingers would reach for the brightest colors first, pushing away all the other kids with superhuman strength. That would always be the bossy kid, the one who would wave her/his hand frantically in the air whenever the teacher asked a question, start the "no cuts" rule in water fountain lines, and show off his or her sack lunch everyday. (they'd also be the type who would secretly pick their nose in the corner of the classroom when they thought no one was watching.) *On a slight side note~, speaking of sack lunches, don't even get me into that...I went to elementary school in Texas with lots of white kids and I was the only asian in my class. Hence, while everyone else got the generic peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a bag of chips for lunch in a brown paper bag, I got rice and some sort of vegetables with beef in a tupperware box, wrapped in a nifty Chinese supermarket plastic bag (after all, brown paper bags cost money, and why buy those when you can get plastic bags for FREE!)...but yes i used to long for brown paper bags instead of the logo-imprinted plastic bags i had so that kids wouldn't ask me questions like "what's diho supermarket?"...but yes, that was, UNTIL I got this awesome puppies red lunch box in fourth grade. you know, the big, square clangy ones...I was fiercely, irrationally proud of mine..it had like ten puppies giggling on the cover and it said, "what's so funny, puppies?" Looking back on it, I guess the lunch box was kinda cheesy, but hey i loved it, okay? =)

once again, irrelevant information. Sorry, elementary school just brings back so many memories! Hahahaha...ok what was I saying? OH, yes, the crayons. Okay, so that one greedy little spoiled brat kid who stole all the crayons would then proceed to NOT SHARE and just hog them all, crouched in the corner of the table coloring away like there was no tomorrow, while the rest of the kids made do with stubby, blunt yellow and red crayons with the paper peeling off. This would happen until the teacher would come to intervene and tell the kid to share. Repeat cycle.

So, what, you ask, is my point in bringing up all of this? No, I'm not still having bitter crayon nightmares in case y'all are wondering...I just suddenly thought of people like the crayon-stealer because of a certain incident that occurred today. Just when I thought that we'd passed the stages of youth with greedy crayon-stealers lurking in the halls, today I encountered another one. Except this time, the person wasn't stealing crayons, and this time, I wasn't five years old. It just shocks me that some people can just be so plain PSYCHO...and I use psycho in the scary, obsessive-compulsive, ultra controlling sense of the word. How amazing that people can still act like they are the center of the universe and give other people attitude for no damn reason. How terrifying that there are people like that who call themselves college students. Some people need to open their eyes and see that they're no longer in a kindergarten classroom. Some people need to, plainly put, grow up. Okay, now I sound like an enraged b*@&$, but I'm really not...I am just hear at work in unit 1 and since I have nothing better to do, I decided to blog all my frustrations out. =) It's just that, growing up, I always had a thing called RESPECT for other people, you know? Especially older people who are supposed to be wiser and more knowledgeable than you are and hence have more experience up their sleeves. It just confounds me, I guess, that there are people out there who think they know everything about the world and the way it works as a wide-eyed first year in college. I'm only a second year, not much older, but at least I'm not too proud to admit that I still have LOTS and LOTS to learn.

*Sigh*...okay enough ranting and raving for Christine now...I must get back to work now, I actually have a tutee here to see me! yayeee...hip hip hooray! =) good luck to everyone with midterms/papers, only FIVE MORE WEEKS until FREEEDOOOMMMMMM!!!! (as william wallace would say)...ok i'm a dork! hehe =)


by christine at 8:31 PM ©

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Wednesday, April 02, 2003

"I suppose I do have one unembarassed passion. I want to know how it feels to care about something passionately."
-Charles Kaufman/Susan Orlean "Adaptation"






by christine at 6:12 PM ©

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