It was Wednesday, the day I teach art, and we had just begun working with markers. My art class and I were coloring in a large field of grass. Even though the markers were brand new, they were already drying up and shriveling under the younger students’ scrubbing. I told the class not to push the marker into the paper so hard and that they should lightly shake the marker to restore some of the juice.

My brother who is rather a clever fellow, calmly stated “Everyone pay attention. You shouldn’t tie your markers to a string and swing them around like this.” He gestured with his arm which he was swinging in wide circles. “Or it will explode and leak everywhere.” He finished magnanimously. The 12 year old boys stared at him in awe. Why what a novel idea, to make a marker explode; but would it really work? Two of them decided to test the idea out. They stood up and looked about for a bit of string, but not finding any decided to use their arms. They held their markers in one hand a wildly swung their little arms in circles. Then excitedly they took the lids off. The ink flowed out onto the desks and a few drops colored the already stained carpet. They were surprised! It had actually worked! My brother snickered. The two green markers had to be thrown away and now when we draw with markers those two boys have to make due with the supplies they have. One uses colored pencils for green and the other blends blue and yellow. They learned a lesson, but did my brother?