Harold and The Purple Crayon (A Sequel)

For Alana who wondered what happened to Harold when he grew up or his crayon ran out.
And for my fourth graders who will be writing story sequels this week, and drawing their own paths in the years to come.

Sequel: Harold and the Purple Crayon

Harold continued drawing his world the way he wanted it to be for a long time. One day, a grown-up Harold looked down at his purple crayon and realized that it was almost all used up. Soon there would be nothing left of it at all, and he realized that a decision had to be made. He took his shard of purple crayon and tucked it lovingly into his pants pocket. He patted it twice to reassure himself, and then he lifted his arms up over his head, grabbed a hold of the white wall around his purple bed and ripped the wall down. The paper crumbled under his grasp, and soon he was surrounded by a lifetime of purple drawings shredded at his feet while he stood in his actual bedroom by the light of his actual window. He climbed out.
It’s a strange thing to see the world the way it actually is after years of drawing it the way you wanted it to be.
Harold was wonderstruck.

It was the color mostly. Of course there was purple, he noticed that first as it washed across the expanse of sky, but the sun was a brilliant infusion of orange, yellow, and red, colors he hadn’t seen in what felt like a lifetime. He stood entranced and engulfed in the warmth that his purple sun could never provide. He felt assured that he had made the right choice.

He walked on down a road that he did not draw, and enjoyed the mystery of where it might lead him. The loneliness he had known for so long seemed to fade as other travelers (some going his way, some going their own) passed by him on the winding road.

He made friends, smelled flowers, got lost, found his way. He saw things he would never have thought to draw, and felt things that even his best purple crayon scribblings could never have allowed him to feel. He was alive and aware, intrigued and inspired, he was happy...except when he wasn’t.

Sometimes, this actual world made Harold want to run back to his paper fantasy and hide. The faces he met in this world were not always smiling, the mysteries he encountered weren’t always solvable, and there were still waves that wanted to swallow him but no purple boat to rescue him from their grasp.

He thumbed the waxy piece of crayon in his pocket and wished that he could use it here, wished that he didn’t have to choose just one way to be Harold. If only his purple crayon could change sad eyes to happy ones, darkness to light, confusion to understanding. He decided that things had been less complicated when he was the author and illustrator of every part of his own story, and he sat up one night under the light of the real moon, contemplating covering his walls and window with paper once again.

While he thought, he doodled with his crayon a picture of all the things in this real-world that he would miss most of all, when he was finished, his drawing looked a lot like a family. He realized that this family he had drawn was not real, was not his and although he could draw them near to him, and smiling he couldn’t make them exist. The sun shining over them could never bring them actual warmth, the holding hands he illustrated could never bring him true comfort, the kind eyes he drew could never give him sincere counsel, could never shine with pride or recognition, could never fill the empty space that he would know if he left the real world behind.

Harold felt helpless.

He knew he couldn’t live happily in a world that wasn’t real, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to face the unpredictability and disappointment of a world that was. He twirled his crayon between his fingers for a long time, and then he got up.

Methodically he spread his white paper all across his bedroom floor in a line. At the one end he drew the world the way it was, and at the other end he drew it the way he wished it could be. In between the two he drew a bumpy, winding, twisting path. Along the path he drew himself making his way as best as he could, and then with his last millimeter of purple crayon he drew you, because he knew he’d need your help to get to where he was going. He folded up his plan, tucked it into his pocket where his purple crayon had been, and stepped out into the sun.