calculus ate my crayons

I want to skip work in the future so I took calculus.
At least, that's what I tell myself.
Because high school is hard but "college is harder"
and all I want is to fit in, get good grades, and move on.

when we were little, no body really cared about fitting in,
although we did want to skip as much work as we could,
an A student could be friends with a kid who barely came, and not care.
there was no such thing as a clique in kindergarten.

But now my over achieving brain has been hard wired
to follow the made up social rules that Nohbody made up.
I have to type my assignments now which takes twice as long.

No. Not anymore. I want my crayons and markers.
I want to be able to mark on a page without taking notes
I want to be able to color and not have to turn it in.
And I want to color outside the lines.
I want to go back to kindergarten.

Scratch that. I want preschool.
Home-schooled preschool.
Where my sister taught me to read
and I learned the color red
when I fell out of her wheelbarrow
and scraped my knee.

But even though I promised my mom I wouldn't

I grew up.

I wish I could've kept that promise.
Maybe if I had colored just a bit more
refused to let go of my crayons when the teacher said so
Maybe then, just maybe, I wouldn't have grown up.

But I did.

I think fifth grade is the last year I brought class school supplies.
and I remember that crayons weren't on the list.
That's also when the cliques started.
Fifth grade changed everything.

our teachers said no more crayons,
it's time for math now. and foolishly

so foolishly

we listened.

I want to go back.
Back before I had to fit in.
Back before math became important.
Back before I lost my self in the sameness of school.
Back before calculus ate my crayons.

Back before spelling mattered and
back to when I could turn in my assignments
in a color other than blue or black ink.
No Times New Roman, 1.5 margin, MLA format.
Three different colors of crayons.
Sentences about nothing that meant everything.

I want my crayons and I want my childhood.
But the adults ate them.