The Way I See It...

When I was a freshman in high school, my English teacher had each student write an essay based on an NPR segment called "This I Believe". Now I'm going to be honest with ya: NPR doesn't sound super exciting to a fourteen year old girl whose favorite news sources include Seventeen magazine. (I'm not giving myself or my parents enough credit though; I watched the early morning news and The Today Show, too, so I wasn't that vapid...)

I digress. Back to "This I Believe". "This I Believe" is a collection of essays, written by different people, expressing (as the title hints), what they believe. These essays ranged from a successful doctor’s belief that all children should have free health care to Tony Hawk’s belief that you should do what you love. After reading just a couple essays, I was hooked.

In fact, these essays would go on to shape several of my core beliefs, and coming up with one of my own came organically. Want to know what my belief was? Well, perfect, because today's blogging topic is: "A piece of advice you have for others. Anything at all." Drum roll, everyone, because here's my advice.....

I believe you should always buy the 64 pack of crayons.

 

And why wouldn't you trust this gal for advice?!

(Back in my Plato's Closet employee days... I loved trying on some of the gems people brought in...)

Everyone knows that the best thing about going back to school in elementary school is not meeting your new teacher, or seeing your friends again. It’s going shopping with your parents and picking out cool folders, pencil boxes, and of course, the art supplies.

Skipping down the aisle of markers, colored pencils, and water color paint sets, I would find the classics: crayons. My eyes darted past the 8 and 16 packs; those were boring. They only included the basics: just enough to draw a typical picture. The 24 pack was okay, (and probably what I’d end up with because my mom knew how often I broke crayons with my intensity), but my eyes focused on the motherload: the Crayola 64 pack.

 

Ohhh, yeah.

The 64 pack was cool, not only because of the crayon sharpener on the back (although that alone is just, wow), but because of all the possibilities it held.

 

Can you imagine if the preschool had 64 pack for me to use?! Now THOSE would have made some cool dinosaurs! (And yes, preschool. That's what I did at 7:30 AM on Wednesdays this semester... Early childhood education major problems- and solutions!)

I didn’t have to use just “pink” for my hair bow in pictures, I could use “tickle me pink”. The sun didn’t have to be just yellow or orange- it could be “macaroni and cheese”. 64 pack meant diversity. It meant no two of my pictures had to look the same because I had so many crayon colors to choose from.
It’s not that I don’t like ROY G BIV, it’s just that with a 64 pack, my world was a whole lot more colorful and interesting.

I try to still live the 64 pack lifestyle. I like mixing things up, and I love being around different kinds of people with different perspectives. It’s possible to live your life with just an 8 pack of people and places, and it could even be a nice life. But I’d like to challenge everyone to splurge on the 64 pack.

 

Corey and I have been doin' the whole "64-pack new experiences abroad while heinously matching" thing since 1997, when we visited Germany for a couple of months for my dad's job.

Meet new, exciting, different people and travel to new, exciting and different places. It’s never a bad thing to learn about new cultures, and you may even learn something about yourself. When you immerse yourself in new experiences, you can decide what you like, and what you don’t like. You can decide what you agree with, and what you disagree with. These experiences and opinions are the things that make us each unique. They shape who we are.

If you use the 64 pack method, you will not end up disappointed. Maybe sometimes you won’t end up with the prettiest picture, but more often than not, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results. So when you have the choice, I believe you should always go for the 64 pack.