Etch-A-Sketch memories

The venerable Etch-A-Sketch being back in the news brings back childhood memories. We got an Etch-A-Sketch when they were newly released, the hot new must-have toy. (I know, I'm dating myself.)

Could anyone else draw with the darn thing? I sure couldn't. What I liked to do, though, was 'clear the board'. Anyone else do that?

What you did was draw a straight line across the board, then come back and draw another line parallel to the first one. If you're doing it right, you don't have two lines, you've just thickened and broadened the first line. Then you go back and forth doing the same thing, making your line broader and broader, clearing off the silvering from the entire screen.

It's a long and tedious process.  But once you have a large enough clearing – you can see inside! And you can watch the mechanism working.

For some reason, that always fascinated me. Not sure what it all means – you think there's a metaphor in there somewhere?