When I was growing up, we had a large chalk board in the living room. It wasn't only a place to write important family messages. It was the center of our family life. My parents were pretty clever with the way that they did things. They found a way to make everything into a game, and as a result we were much better behaved and had a lot more fun living. The chalk board was a great example of this. We would leave messages for each other, draw pictures, play games, and even do our homework on it. I thought chalk boards were the neatest, most versatile thing in the world when I was growing up. My least favorite part of the night was when I had to erase the chalk after doing my homework.
Of course, dry erase boards have largely replaced chalk boards nowadays. As a matter of fact, it can be hard to find a school with a wall chalk board. Dry erase markers have a lot of advantages over chalk. When I was in college, we would all use dry erase message boards, putting them on our dorm room doors so that we could leave each other drawings and messages. We could use several different colors, erase things easily with one go, get by without having to wash erasers, and most importantly not have to breathe in all of that chalk dust! Best of all, you could tie a marker to the door so that no one would steal it. With a chalk board, someone would always walk off with the chalk and you would have to break out another piece.
Even so, there is a part of me that misses the elegance of the chalk board. The great thing about drawing and writing with chalk is that everything is so straightforward and to the point. There is no part of the chalk that gets wasted, and it always works just like you expect it to. With a dry erase marker, you have to worry about the ink drying out. Sometimes the flow is good, and sometimes it isn't so good. You have to decide when to throw out a marker, and when you should try to save it for a little bit longer. It is also much more wasteful, as you end up throwing out the whole plastic marker just because the ink has run out. With a chalk board, however, the only thing you ever throw out is the small cardboard box that the chalk comes in.
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