The classroom was quiet except for the sounds of pencil crayons and markers dragging and scribbling across pieces of paper. I was sitting in my grade two classroom colouring a self-portrait for art class. We were told to draw then colour in a picture of ourselves. Every so often you would hear a whisper saying, “Can I use your skin colour marker?”. I was in a mainly white classroom so whenever someone asked that question, they meant the peach coloured marker. 

I had just finished drawing myself and began to colour in my picture. I had noticed some of my markers were missing but I just ignored it and kept colouring. I was at the part of my colouring where I was starting to colour in my skin colour. I turned around to my classmate sitting behind me and asked him if I could use his skin colour marker. He reached into him pencil case and pulled out a brown marker. I was in shock for a second before I said, “No I need the skin colour marker that matches my skin.”. 

“You mean the peach marker. Not everyone has light skin colour like the peach marker, people can have skin like the brown I pulled out”. 

He handed me the peach marker and went back to his self-portrait. I sat there for a second thinking about what he had just said. I never meant any harm by calling the peach marker “skin colour”. I know people have all different skin colours. Does it make me a bad person for calling the peach marker “skin colour”? How come everyone in my class calls the peach marker “skin colour”? How do other people that don’t have light skin feel when they hear people call the peach marker “skin colour”? 

I went back to colouring in my self-portrait but couldn’t get the thoughts out of my head. When I was done colouring in my skin, I turned around and handed my classmate back his marker, “Here is your peach marker back”. He looked up and at the same time, we smiled at each other.