MLM: Edmund Scientific

I loved the Edmund Scientific's catalog when I was a kid. It was filled with all sorts of fascinating stuff. They had scientific toys and fun pseudoscientific stuff (I got my Pyrex crystal ball from them). They had magnets and iron filings that let you see magnetic lines of force.

They had stuff that was way out of my reach that I could only dream about. There were the motor-driven Celestron telescopes with equatorial mounts! There were the oil immersion microscopes.

How I wished we were rich so I could have all of neat things in the catalog.

But it was a thrill getting less expensive things. It started with filling out the order form. You'd enter the quantity, the item's descripton, the catalog number, the unit price, and the total amount for the quantity ordered (usually just the unit price, darn it!). You'd add up all the lines and Mom or Dad would write a check (thanks Mom and Dad!) and send it off.

Then you'd wait.

Some time later the mailman would deliver a package and you'd get to live your dreams!

One of those packages had a set of fluorescent crayons.
I had a black light. This was back in the age of DayGlo posters that lit up spectacularly under black light. But those were for Hippies. I had better use for my black light. I had rocks and minerals that fluoresced (after all, the word comes from fluorite!). But while I was at it, do-it-yourself black light posters were a fun thing to make. Thus the crayons. Cool, huh?

You'll notice that three of the crayons are missing. Well, either Pough or Dough got into my box of fluorescent crayons and ate some of them. This made for an exciting tour of poop patrol duty. Crayons, you know, don't digest. They come out pretty much the way they go in. With a long extension cord and my black light, the bits of crayons in the Pough poo-poo (or the Dough doo-doo) made for easy pickins.

(By the way, I convinced Mom to throw that black light away instead of giving it to Casa Mesita. It had only a little cardboard taped to its back to keep little kids from being electrocuted.)