One first-grade student just learned the hard way that unchecked ambition can lead people to total ruin: This kid’s Crayola marker sword has broken into pieces after he recklessly added a seventh marker.
It might be devastating, but this is the price you pay for hubris.
When seven-year-old Crispin Oakes first started building a sword out of Crayola markers during a free-draw period at school, he had modest and humble intentions. All he wanted to do was build a small weapon he could swing around while pretending to fight zombies and to smack his friend Liam. Sadly, Crispin quickly realized that the more markers he attached to his sword, the bigger and more powerful the sword became, and what started as a three-marker weapon quickly became a five- and then six-marker weapon. This made his marker sword the longest and most powerful in the history of his school, and he was able to smack Liam from all the way across the art table.
But that wasn’t enough for Crispin. He didn’t just want power—he wanted absolute power. He wanted to wield a weapon made of more markers than anyone had ever thought possible. And therein lay the seeds of his ultimate undoing.
“I was watching Crispin smack Liam and I remember thinking, ‘This is the longest marker sword I’ve ever seen,’” says Crispin’s teacher, Meredith Osgood, who says she witnessed her student’s downfall with a mix of revulsion and fascination. “Then when he went for the seventh marker I was like, ‘That fucker’s gone completely insane.’ Next thing I know the whole sword is disintegrating and the little wannabe God-child is on his knees surrounded by the shards of his shattered weapon.”
As soon as he attached the seventh marker to his sword, the entire weapon began to wobble. Liam started shouting to Crispin that the sword was going to break, and soon all the kids in his class were shouting at Crispin that his marker sword had become too large, but by this point Crispin had gone completely mad with power and was fully insensate to all appeals to reason and humanity. Instead of heeding the warnings from his classmates he just kept swinging the massive sword at pretend zombies, and occasionally at Liam. Within seconds, the entire sword gave one final wobble and crumbled into chunks that splintered into individual markers as they hit the ground, leaving Crispin holding a single marker.
Now Crispin is on his hands and knees, desperately trying to collect the markers while Liam gets his revenge by smacking him with a sensible and structurally sound three-marker sword. Fate has dealt Crispin a cruel blow, but in light of his brazen hubris, one can only consider it to be justice. Let this be a lesson to all would-be tyrants who seek unlimited power and unparalleled weaponry: Nobody needs a sword that is longer than four markers long to fight imaginary zombies and smack their friends. Anything longer is an abomination born from pure egotism, and can only lead you to destruction.
