Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Who are you?

The other day, my daughter Cera sent me one of the screwy survey emails. You know the ones - what about this? What about that? This one had the premise that you answered each question with a word that started with the first letter of your first name. Being a dad, you reply to these emails from time to time. It's a dad thing. My wife Kathy is sitting with me as I read the email, so we reply with both our answers; being the good mom she is. It's a mom thing.

As we are going through this survey (you'll get to read the questions in a bit), we get to the final question: a crayon color. Technically, the question was "a color", but for the reason you will soon see, we needed to adapt the question slightly. Well, it was a bit of a struggle for us to come up with a "J" answer, but decided "jade" worked. Now, a "K" answer - this proved to be quite the challenge. "Khaki" was an easy call at first, but a previous question was "something you wear", and we didn't want to repeat an answer, so we keep brain storming. Well, about 3 seconds into our brain storm, I decided to hit Google up with a search, and entered "crayon colors". Figured it would be a fast search, and surely Crayola has created a color named after some "K" phrase. Imagine our shock in reading this Wikipedia return and seeing nary a single "K" named crayon. On a side note - that page is just a trove of information and a colorful feast for your eyes. But com'on - NO "K" CRAYONS???? Now, if you look down the list, you notice 3 other letters have also gone a century plus without a crayon honoring them - Q, X, & Z. Those make sense. I mean - they are the highest scoring letters in Scrabble, but "K" scores only a 5 while "J" scores an 8 (as does "X"), and there have been two crayons with the letter "J". This is an outrage.

So off to Crayola's website for a little complaint. Maybe it was late in the day, but I think it's more the fact that my wife and I just aren't right in the head (and proud of it). Today, someone in Crayola's customer service department is reading the following gem:

Dear Sir or Madam:

Today I was filling out a survey based on myself. I came across the following question:

"a crayon color"

The requirements of this survey is that every answer I supply must begin with the first letter of my first name. Here - check out the survey for yourself:

1. What is your name?
2. Type of vehicle
3. Name a city
4. Girls name (not your own)
Boys name (not your own)
5. Name of a drink
6. A cartoon character
7. Someone famous
8. Something you'd find in a bathroom
9. Something you'd wear
10. An animal
11. A body part
12. A crayon color

But I digress - I came upon question 12 and I was stumped. You see, my name begins with the letter "K" (I hope you are not named Knute, Xavier or Zelda - and maybe for more reason that just the survey). I was unable to quickly come to an answer, so I entrusted a Google search on the subject "Crayon colors" to save my biscuits. Surely, Crayola, bringing years of joy and a myriad of colors to the United States - nay....the world - have created a color name with the first letter being the 11th letter of our syllabary. Imagine my chagrin when I discovered not one has been created in the entire history of your fine company.

Anyway - may we suggest a few names for an upcoming 97 count box:

Khaki
Kangaroo Brown
Katydid green (you could release that color based on locust outbreaks every 7 years or so)

Just some thoughts in our heads. And if an odd numbered crayon box would cause production line issues, may we suggest a "q" titled crayon, as one has never been created. Maybe "quinine"???


I can't wait to read their reply. If we keep this up, I am sure the disappearance of a "contact us" link on websites will be attributed to us.

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Now playing: "Jump Jimmy (Stronger Than Mine)" by Tonic
via FoxyTunes

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