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.