Crayons, a short story.

 

(AN: I’ve been writing short stories like crazy lately for a writing contest hosted by accomplished author and blogger friend Andrew Toy. Andrew is kick starting his own publishing company, Endever, and he wants it to begin with a bang! There is a cash prize for the winner so consider submitting something! And while your at it, go like his Facebook page. This short story is one of the many I’ve come up with lately. I’ve taken it off my list of submissions for the contest so I’m sharing it here with you! Enjoy.)

 

“Well, you see daddy…remember that boy? You work with his daddy and I heard you and momma talking one night and you said he was colorblind. I’ve never heard of that before so I thought I’d watch him real close and try to figure out what’s wrong with him. He blinks a lot and his shoes get untied all the time but he seems okay. I swing beside him on the playground sometimes.

But today we had art with Mrs. Scoggins and she was showing us how to color by reading the numbers that stand for certain colors. It was pretty easy. Haley and I were going to do the picture of the horses. But first, Mrs. Scoggins picked people to help her show us how to do it on the board. Well she picked him, daddy, she picked James. I thought he was scared to stand up because he said he didn’t want to do it. But Mrs. Scoggins made him stand up there anyways. She asked him to pick the color that went with number three and James said he didn’t know which color it was. At first, she seemed nice and asked him to read the color. It was brown and he said it. But he said he still didn’t know which one it was. He was picking up different colors but he never picked up brown, daddy, and that’s when Mrs. Scoggins got real mad and said, ‘What are you doing in third grade if you don’t even know your colors?’ That’s when everyone started laughing. Timothy laughed the loudest and said James needed to go back to preschool. But I didn’t think it was funny, daddy. He looked really sad. I think maybe he wanted to cry. But he sat back down and didn’t say anything else. People kept laughing at him but he just sat down.”

The father looked at his daughter’s fallen face and confused eyes for a moment then turned to glare at the principle sitting across from him behind a big oak desk.

“I’m sorry, but I fail to see how my daughter did anything wrong in this situation. It sounds more like you need to educate your staff on the importance of knowing their student’s academic needs. It might save them from harassing an innocent child to the point of humiliation. I can’t believe this!”

The principle held up his hands in surrender and gave a calm nod. “Maybe you’ll understand once your daughter finishes her story.”

The father looked down in puzzlement and saw his daughter’s face light up with devilish humor. “What happened honey?”

She took in an excited breath and gushed out with pride, “I took all the brown crayons, daddy, and I put them in Mrs.Scoggins coffee.”

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