To the class of '03: pull my finger, please

I bought a pack of crayons last week. One hundred and twenty-four colors in all: every shade humanly imaginable. And a built in sharpener in the back to boot. This is the pack that you begged and begged your mother to get you, and even though your school supply list specifically called for the oh-so Amish color spectrum of the 16-count pack, she gave in and let you indulge your Picasso aspirations. Finally, you can accurately portray puke and human entrails. Or unicorns and cosmic sunsets _ whatever your little first grade mind felt like immortalizing on an over-sized piece of manila construction paper.

This is the pack that you toted around just to make the other kiddies know how monochromatic their lives were _ one dimensional, and completely without pop. But you have pop. You are in living Technicolor. This is the pack of crayons that epitomizes freedom of choice and variety. If you were to lay all of your crayons end to end, they would make a multi-colored lasso that would loop the entire world three times over (a feat which you intend to do someday, right after you dig that hole to China in your backyard). And this is pack that I have stashed in the bottom right drawer of my desk at this very moment.

Yesterday I drew a picture of a man blasting off into the starry unknown. Strapped to his back is a twin-booster turbo jet propulsion pack, which creates a silvery plumage of smoke stretching hundreds of thousands of millions of miles down to the round contour of the earth below. His arms reach forward past his head like Superman in full flight, his nose the apex of his body. He is smiling.

So why, you might ask, is someone, who has well surpassed the minimum height requirement for the Gravitron for some time now, churning out Crayola masterpieces by the day? This was a question I asked myself many a time this past summer as I found myself hunkered down in front of the TV watching Nickelodeon, phone on one ear, and pleading with my friends (through mouthfuls of Pop Rocks) to come over for a round of Pictionary.

And then one day not too long ago, the answer came to me: I am having a mid-mid life crisis. Here I am: 21 years old, a senior in college, and I am scared of what the future has in store for me. Terrified to the very core, actually. I am that forty-something accountant, who wakes up one morning in a cold sweat of ominous dejection at the direction of his life, and consequently tools into the annual company picnic the following week in a shiny new convertible, complete with a tittering blonde riding shotgun.

But instead of the fly wheels and honey, I am pining over days even more bygone. Forget the Lamborgini Diablo; I want that yellow PowerWheels Jeep that my mother, in all her maternal clairvoyance, divined would de-brain me all over the front sidewalk, and therefore refused to buy. And forget Pamela Lee _ give me Barbie's plastics parts instead.

Looking at my moon man picture and recalling my doodles produced in Ms. Dean's first grade class, I see many similarities. Not only has my artistic ability remained relatively the same, but the feeling of satisfaction and happiness that I got out of those Crayola creations has not changed either. Actually, I might get more out of them now. So bring it, I say. I'm pulling into hyper-warp speed, plowing full-force into that starry unknown. Mid-mid life crisis and all.

Here's a little advice for my fellow classmates of '03 (and anyone else who has found themselves at the service counter, pockets and fists overflowing with Now'N Laters): Do not just embrace your inner child _ challenge him to a belly flop contest in the dead of winter, ask her if she would like a Wet Willy or a Purple Nurple or a Steriod Wedgie and then deliver without hesitation or mercy. Always be sure to tuck him in at the end of the day, and never send her off to the orphanage.

Because the real world is a'coming, and I have a feeling that we are going to need all the company we can get.

Christopher Cao is a senior majoring in psychology.