That Big Kid Ellen #2: Complete a coloring book
One of my dad’s favorite humble-brag stories to tell about his “wunderkind” (me) is about when he took me to an open house at a fire station. I was two years old and gravitated away from the fire engines (didn’t like strangers) and towards the coloring table. They had laid out a variety of crayons and circular pieces of paper with different fire-station-themed drawings on them that could be slid into a plastic cover with a pin on the back. Knowing me, I’m pretty sure I chose the one with the fire station dog on it.
There I was, coloring wildly and freely, as a two-year-old would. Mismatched colors (dogs can be green!), totally outside the lines, a complete mishmash of baby creativity. I was having a blast.
Next to me was a young boy, about the same size as me, and he was daintily coloring in his drawing perfectly. PERFECTLY. His mom winced a bit, watching me go buckwild with the crayons, looked at my dad, and not-so-kindly asked, “What’s wrong with your daughter?”
My dad probably crumpled his nose when he responded, “She’s two. There’s nothing wrong with her.”
Her face quickly evolved from passive-aggressive pity to absolute awe.
“Oh! My son is five! Your daughter is very tall for her age.”
I can just see the smirk on my dad’s face when he patted me on the back, proud of bestowing his ungodly height onto his toddler. He still wears that smirk when he tells people that story now, even as his daughter is well into her thirties and very obviously tall.
From my dad’s perspective, this is all about a child excelling at something from a very young age. From my perspective, this is where my love for coloring was truly birthed. I didn’t care about posturing adults — I just wanted to color. I loved coloring. I loved crayons. I loved colored pencils (especially the mini ones). I loved making black and white outlines come to life.
Most of my vivid memories of coloring books come from when I was around 3 or 4 years old. Most specifically, I was into Barbie coloring books. Ooh baby, was I into coloring in Barbie’s fashion choices and various professional uniforms with bold polka dots and plaid and animal-shaped patterns.
Back then, I spent most of my days at my nanny’s house. My nanny, Nancy, and her husband, Ray, were a kind, older couple who cared for me while my mom (a single mother at the time) worked during the day. They watched me in their two-story house in Chicago Suburbia, which had a living area and bathroom on the ground floor next to the garage and all of the bedrooms, kitchen, and the off-limits doll room on the second floor.
I’ll get to the doll room, don’t worry.
They also had two dogs, Max and Frosty — this is where my love affair for dogs turned into reality. Frosty was a big ol’ fluffy sweetheart and Max was a Cocker Spaniel disaster. Both of these dogs were so interesting to me that I would follow them around the house, hoping to catch them in a good mood when I could pet them or rest my head on their belly when they were sleeping.
They were definitely not allowed in the doll room.
The things that I remember most about my time with Nancy was how her homemade chicken soup was heavy on the celery, how she used to tell me that one of my legs was hollow because I would eat so much of said celery-chicken soup, how she taught me how to whistle, how she loved watching QVC and other shopping channels, and that one time that a tornado touched down close to her home and we huddled together in the ground floor bathroom while it passed.
And her doll room. Did I mention that yet?
Ray usually spent his time in the garage working on fixing up his cars, always smoking a cigarette. I didn’t really like hanging out in the garage with him, but I did it almost every day for an hour so that I could watch The Price is Right. He had a 50’s era soda-bar-style swivel stool (complete with a torn up red leather seat) set up at his work bench. It was aimed right at a tiny TV that was no more than 10 inches in width, complete with a giant antennae held together by tape awkwardly sticking up from the back.
I used to balance my little body on that stool, stick my little fingers in my nose to keep the smoke out, and watch Bob Barker every day. I might have only been 4, but I knew how much milk, cereal, shampoo, tomato paste, and dish detergent cost. My favorite game was Plinko, and I would try to guess where the disc would land by tracing my sticky finger along the screen, never able to predict its path. I would jump up and down when someone won the Showcase Showdown by getting exactly $1.00, and would act super judgmental when someone chose the final Showdown package that I thought was worthless (why would you choose the car when you could go to Hawaii?!).
For the rest of the hours in the day when I wasn’t with Ray, I was in the downstairs living room in front of another TV, coloring. There was a very thin layer of green carpet on top of a cement floor that I would uncomfortably lay on, stomach-side down, chin scraping against the bristly fabric underneath me, amidst a spread of chunky crayons. Like I mentioned before, my coloring books were full of Barbie dresses and shoes and other fashion items.
And my inspiration for how I colored in Barbie’s clothes came from the doll room.
I told you I’d come back to the doll room!
Nancy had filled an entire living room (and most of the other empty spaces around the house, much to Ray’s dismay) with her collection of porcelain dolls. They were lined up on the floor, secure in stands that clipped around their tiny backs, on top of cabinets, tables, couches — they were *everywhere.* Each doll was about a foot and half tall, smooth skin, glossy eyes, and extravagant outfits. She couldn’t wait to for a new model to pop up on her TV-shopping-channels; I was mesmerized by their clothes.
Most were dressed in Victorian outfits — frilly, multi-layer dresses, big hats with bows and ribbons, and quaffed curls cascading down their shoulders and back. There were dresses in every color of the rainbow, every pattern you could think of, some even in specialty costumes in slightly-offensive cultural themes like Native American headsets or geisha robes. I tried to lift the fabric of their dresses to see their tiny shoes, but I was mostly too afraid to touch them — Nancy had done a good job instilling the fear of God into me if I were to break one of them.
Now, to most adults, this room probably seemed like the set to some horror movie, the dolls vacant eyes hinting at Chucky-like possession. But, for me, they were my inspiration for my coloring books (as well as some Halloween costumes that you can read about here). I would sit down, cross-legged, at the edge of the doll room and try to remember every detail I could before heading back downstairs to the piles of coloring books that were waiting for me. It was truly a little girl’s dream.
I went in a different direction for Big Kid Ellen 😈.
I went back to Etsy to try to find a unique adult coloring book. I know that adult coloring books have become extremely popular in the last couple years, but I was searching for a truly *adult* option. Something a little NSFW.
I was not disappointed.
I considered buying some chunky crayons, but instead grabbed my bag of felt-tipped pens that I use everyday for note-taking at work. I quickly realized that I had too few colors available to make some of these designs truly pop. So I bought a 48-piece set of colored pencils. I finished one page with the pencils and realized I didn’t have a pencil sharpener… and I still wasn’t feeling like I couldn’t make the drawing really stand out. I wanted them to POP, gosh darn it!
So I bought a 60-piece set of dual brush pens and started coloring with those. Yes, you might have picked up on the fact that I was procrastinating by trying to make these boobs and penises perfect. Boobs and penises are not meant to be perfect. Coloring books are not meant to be perfect. Eventually I found an imperfect groove, using every color of pen available to me, and started to have a lot of fun.
One important thing to note that was different from this kid experience as an adult was my body. At first, I set up a little box to color on top of on the floor in our living room and hunched my body over it for an hour while I colored.
This was not sustainable.
When I went to stand up, my entire body was stiff and in pain. My neck had a deep knot in it, and it took a couple yoga classes to feel back to normal again. I tried setting it up with me on the couch while watching TV, but that was still challenging for my neck. I realized that I tend to go all out when coloring, getting into a flow state and not moving for a really long time. But listening to my body is more important — this is something I am actively working on. The lesson I learned is that coloring has to happen in small does for adult Ellen. Little kid could lay on her belly for hours on top of thinly-veiled concrete. Adult Ellen needs a full massage after bending over for 30 minutes.
Good thing I live with a massage therapist!
One last thing to note before wrapping up this post. The items on the list that I am drawn to have clearly been the creative ones. At first I told myself that I should try to alternate the type of activity that I write about, thinking I needed to keep it diverse for my audience (hi to my mom and mother-in-law!). But then I remembered that this project is about me. It’s always been about me. So while I *very much* appreciate you reading this, dear reader, I’m going to keep choosing the things that interest me the most, and it seems like the ones that pique my creativity are going to be where this journey starts.
I have a whole year to check everything off the list. So glad you’re along for the ride.
