Crapola Factory

So I took off from work yesterday to accompany my son Jake and his pre-school class to a trip to the Crayola Factory in Easton, PA. Doesn't that sound like a cool field trip? The Crayola Factory, dudes. Big vats of hot wax, mixing up colors like Burnt Sienna and Brick Red. Alas, 'twas not so cool.

When the permission slip came home about a month ago, I figured, "what the hell" and checked off the box to serve as a chaperone. Most of the kids in Jake's class are pretty cool and they seem to like me well enough. I wasn't sure how many kids I would need to look after, but I shouldn't have been worried. I guess a number of parents thought that it would be a cool field trip as well because there was basically a 2:1 kid-to-parent ratio and I was only responsible for my son and another kid named Alex.

I got to the school at 9:00 AM and got my pre-made name tag. It was a green square of construction paper hanging on a black piece of yarn. I was told to wear it around my neck for the rest of the day. Whatever happened to the "Hello, my name is..." stickers?

We then boarded the school buses and set out on the hour trip that would take us to Easton. It had been a long time since I had been on a school bus. A couple of changes have happened since then. One of the changes that have occurred is that now school buses have seat belts. The other change is that the seats are set up differently. I seem to remember equal sized seats on either side of the aisle that would hold two kids apiece. Well they've figured out how to increase seating capacity by 1/4. There are seats holding 3 on the left side of the bus and seats holding 2 on the right side. Well the green team (you remember... me, Jake and Alex) got put in one of the three seaters. I immediatly saw a potential problem. See the room they allow for the typical kid-ass is substantially smaller than the total area required to hold my ass. I'm not terribly overweight, but I'm still a big guy at 6'1" and 210lbs. I quickly jumped across the aisle and commandeered the closest two seater for myself. Nobody complained, so I rode in relative comfort to the wilds of Pennsylvania. They had chartered two school buses so neither one of them was filled to capacity.

Even though I had my groovy green nametag that said "Alan" on it, Alex got into the habit of calling me "Jake's Dad". That phrase had passed from being merely descriptive to actually being my name. Everytime he wanted to get my attention he would say "Jake's dad, are we their yet?" and "Jake's dad, is it time for lunch?". It was cute so I didn't correct him. I learned a lot about him, like the fact that his grandmother lives in China and they shop at a Chinese grocery store. Alex is Chinese, so its not that weird. He just blathered on for the entire hour while Jake and I sat there and listened. Oh also, his dad was going to drive to China to go get his grandmother. I tried to tell him that you couldn't drive to China, but he didn't seem to get it. It was cute and he made me laugh.

Okay, we get to the Crayola Factory in Downtown Easton and I should have known right then that something was up. We weren't at a bustling, working factory. We were at something that looked like a Chamber of Commerce "Downtown Revitalization Project". It turns out the actual Crayola factory was about seven miles away and that this one of those children's interactive museum/activity center. Even that could have been cool, but this one was just lame. I've been to some cool children's musuems before (the Liberty Science museum near the Statue of Liberty is a great one) but this one was really just a Crayola product promotional center. We went from area to area using different Crayola products until the path they route through the building cleverly dumps you out right in front of the Crayola Factory Gift Shop. It was really just a thinly veiled attempt to get your kids addicted to their products. Bleh.

Having said that, there were cool products. They had a big lucite hallway set up in the midde of a big room. At either end, were large buckets filled with their new markers that you can use to write on glass. There was an interesting strata of drawings on these walls. When you knelt down with the little kids, all you saw were scribbles. Near the middle, you got better art work ranging from flowers and houses, to names and writings. Once you stood up to the teenager/adult level, there were some amusing drawings and sayings. Most of them ranging from physically improbable to physically impossible. There was a stern-faced matron hovering around every 4-5 minutes, wielding her spray bottle and wiping down any inappropriate artwork.

When it was time to leave, we were told that one of the buses had broken down. They were sending out another bus from NJ (an hour trip, remember) and so one group would be waiting for another hour before they could leave. Now you would think that wouldn't be bad because those kids would get another hour running around. But, no the Crayola Factory runs their "tours" in morning and afternoon sessions. So our admissions were only good for the morning sessions. Besides these are 3 and 4 year olds who had run around all morning, they just ate lunch, they were well on their way to sleepyland and anything stopping their trip to sleepyland would take them instead to crankyland. The pre-school people worked it out that only twelve people would have to stay behind; 3 adults and 9 kids. And it wouldn't be the green team. Luckily, Alex's parents usually picked him up around 3 o'clock and we needed to be back. Thank you Alex.

But I still want to see the actual Crayola factory. I got myself all worked up to see how they made and packaged this stuff. I have so many questions; How do you mix the colors? What is parrafin wax, anyway? How do you shoot 64 crayons into that box as it passes by on the conveyor belt? What are the retired colors? (remember the crayon called "flesh"? not too PC is it? Wasn't there an "Indian Red" also?). These are questions I need answers to, people!