another crayon memory...

 Yesterday's blog about Crayola crayons reminded me of another crayon memory, this one from early in my teaching career.  My last full time teaching position was at St. Henry's Catholic School here in Fort Wayne.  I taught art to all eight grades and really enjoyed the job very much.  One day, as I was walking between the rows of desks in a sixth grade class room, I noticed an interesting interaction between two students two rows over.  One boy leaned across the aisle and asked his friend to loan him his red crayon.  The boy being asked handed his friend a brown crayon, it was handed back, a green crayon, still not right, two other not red crayons, and finally the requested red crayon.  It dawned on me that the boy handing out the wrong crayons might just be color blind.  I was a little bit disappointed because I had been admiring this young artist's creative use of colors but decided I probably should speak to his parents.  Coincidentally, parent's night was coming up the next week.  As a wandering teacher, without a classroom of my own, I waited in the school office to speak with any parents who might be interested in their children's artistic abilities.  Before the evening began I had asked his homeroom teacher to please send the crayon challenged student's parents to see me when they finished meeting with her.  They walked in to my meeting room looking grim and the father immediately said "What's he done now?"  I was shocked.  This student had never given me any trouble in class.  I quickly explained that there was no behavior problem but I thought he might be colorblind and they might want to have his eyes tested.  After visibly relaxing, you could almost say deflating, the father replied "Well, I'm not surprised.  His older brother is colorblind."  Their older son was already in high school so I had never had him in class.  I had been concerned about how they might take the news, but they were so relieved that their son hadn't been causing trouble in my class that they actually seemed pleased that colorblindness was the only problem.  We all parted as friends.