A Box of Crayons

My brother and I got our first box of crayons when we were probably in middle school. My dad had gone to a city for work and bought a box for us. We had to share it. Though we were a little too old for crayons by then, it was still something we cherished. There was an unspoken understanding that this was probably the only box of crayons we would ever have. If they ran out or broke, they weren’t going to be replaced. We used them very sparingly and very carefully. We kept those crayons for years.

We grew up in a time and place where everything had value, and we understood that at a very early age. Things were never replaced. If something broke, it had to be fixed; nothing was thrown away. We understood the value of money even before we knew how to count.

A generation later:

My son goes through a box of crayons every few weeks. Crayons get broken, crushed, vacuumed. Color markers get stabbed on hard surfaces until the tips look like flowers, then left open to dry . I am grateful that my kids can have things that, at their age, we considered luxuries. But I am also scared that my kids may never truly understand the value of money.

The cost of a box of crayons may not have changed much between the two generations, but the perception of its value definitely has.