Coloring Outside The Lines

For some reason I was thinking about coloring books this weekend.  I think that it must be the coloring book app that the kids have on their Kindle.  My daughter really loves playing with it and is hounding me to get it on my phone:

“Did you get the coloring book app?” she asks bright-eyed.

“Nope…not yet, Shrimp,” I respond without lifting my eyes from a good old Snood clone on my phone. (Yes, that is her nickname).

“C’mon, you should get it.  It’ll be fun!”

“I’ma...you know…uhhh…hey so what did you do today?” trying to change the subject.

I actually don’t know how those conversations end.  I don’t think that I say that I don’t want the app.  Coloring stuff hasn’t really been my thing.  But the conversation does conjure up thoughts from my childhood.  I started thinking about coloring as a little kindergartner.  Which brings up the first of many characteristics that divide the human race: coloring inside the lines.

Coloring inside the lines has been synonymous with conformity and following the letter of the law just as it is written.  You follow authority because – well they are the authority.  You have to do as they say or else you get in trouble. 

So, if coloring inside the lines is synonymous with conformity, then coloring outside of the lines stands for rebellion.  These are the trouble makers with no thought to authority and social mores.  They sow seeds of confusion and chaos wherever they go.  They thumb nose at authority and welcome the trouble that it brings.

These two views – I am projecting from my own experience of what other folks think – are most prevalent in the world.  If not exactly how I describe, at least a partition of humanity into two categories: conformity and rebellion, yin and yang, Beavis and Stuart.

But I thought about it a little bit more and I don’t really think that you can tell much about a person just by the fact that they do or do not color within the lines.  Especially as kids.

Let’s take for instance kids who color within the lines.  It’s true that the future “yespersons” of the world would probably color neatly inside the lines.  But I don’t think that is everybody.  See, they look at the boundaries on the sheet as the boundaries they should adhere to because someone above them told them so without any evaluation on their part. 

What if someone else took a look at the lines for coloring and instead of taking them as the boundary, evaluated the usefulness of that boundary and in the end agreed with it.  They don’t go with authority because of authority.  They go with authority because they happen to agree with authority.  As kids, these folks would look at a picture and color in the lines if they thought that the coloring page was agreeable to them.  I think that is a very different person than the yesperson.

Complex coloring pages also have several small partitions, and it takes time to color each little one.  To color inside the lines takes either patience or commitment to duty.  Either you take it on because it is a constructive task; you agree that the task provided is worth it. Or you continue with each little detail because this is what you should do; you accept unequivocally that authority should be followed because it is authority.  Within the same group we have a sharp contrast.

Now let’s look at my clan – the color-outside-of-the-liners.  Why does someone color outside of the lines?  Sure there are folks who color outside of the lines in spite of authority as pure rebellion.

But I think that there are folks coloring outside the lines that look at the boundaries as suggestions.  They take a look at the boundaries that someone put up as suggestions for them to take or leave.  And they leave them.  These, I contend – can be closely related to color-in-the-liners that evaluate whether it is a picture worth coloring or not.

Another thing is that for detailed coloring books, the details can overwhelm people.  They take a look at each little detail and decide that the subdivisions are too fine for them to comprehend – they prefer wide expanses.

Or they lack patience, or don’t want to color, or they are spastic - all very possible reasons for not coloring inside the lines.

Nowadays with the prevalence of “geek chic” and the like, I think that people look more favorably on kids who color outside of the lines as if they are an Einstein in the making.  And although maybe the kid who colors outside of the lines might be a big picture person who breaks through boundaries to a greater world on the other side, it could also very well be the kid who colors neatly within the lines because they haven’t seen the coloring page that they didn’t like.  What happens when they see something that they disagree with?

In my humble opinion, I think that the coloring thing tells you if it’s a boy or a girl more than anything else.  Or more accurately, whether they like to color or not.

God bless,

Sven