A little-known benefit of the civil rights movement.

The things that go through my mind - you have no idea.

Today, I was thinking about the old flesh colored crayon, and wondering if it still existed. You see, I haven't messed with crayons since I was a child, so I have no idea what sorts of colors they come in now. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

One of the measures of status as a child was the size of ones crayon box. Seriously. I remember being kind of a big-shot around the schoolyard because I had the giant box of 64 with the little sharpener in the back. Lots of kids had the box of 8. Pikers. Any kid with 10 cents can have a box of 8 crayons. Brown, green, orange, red, yellow, black, blue and violet. Boring. I had apricot, bittersweet and burnt sienna. Five years old and 64 crayons. Can life get any better? I submit that it cannot.

Anyway, I remember this Crayola crayon with the name "flesh". As a kid I thought nothing of it, since it sort of matched my flesh color, and I figured that my color was the color of flesh. Made sense, right?

Kind of. Most people in the world, I would come to find out, had flesh more like the color brown or tan. Apparently, the Crayola people figured it out too, and in 1962 they abandoned the flesh color in favor of the more politically correct peach. I don't think we knew what politically correct meant in 1962, but it's odd that I remember that crayon, since I was 5 at the time. My skin isn't the color of a peach, but the greater good was served by changing the name. I don't think I noticed in 1962.

Things like that make me think of how much the world has changed since I was a child. Today, if you tried to market a product that was peach-colored and called it flesh, you'd need legal representation.

Today, Crayola has colors like fuzzy wuzzy brown, outer space and sunset orange and there are 120 of them. Kids are spoiled and clueless.

Of course, there's a beaver color too. Do you have to have a note from your parents to buy that one?