I COLORED OUTSIDE THE LINES
Oprah occasionally features child prodigies on her show. One of these special children was a sixteen-year-old girl who oil paints—in three entirely different styles. She has been called a modern day Monet and her paintings sell for $15,000+ apiece (probably a whole lot more after Oprah’s show).
The girl was discovered at age thirteen by her junior high school teacher when he gave the students easels and oil paints, put some music on, and told them to let go and see what came of it. When he came around to this prodigy’s easel and looked at her magnificent painting, one of a mother and daughter in quiet repose, he gulped and said, “Oh, my, have you worked with oils before?”
“No,” she answered.
“I…I think we need to speak with your parents.”
Oprah queried the young woman, asking her if she had shown any prior signs of this mystical gift. Had she always had a drive to paint? Was she always doodling or sketching?
“No,” the girl shook her head to all of Oprah’s questions. “Nothing.”
Oprah suddenly sat up straighter, as though an emotion had just shot through her. She grinned wide. “Well, did you color outside the lines?”
I laughed out loud. That was me as a child—always coloring outside the lines. I don’t remember the rest of the television show because I got lost in Oprah’s comment.
I detested coloring inside the lines or sticking to “normal” colors for things. The other kids berated me, told me a horse couldn’t be purple, that I was an idiot for coloring a swan green with a red head. And oh, the teacher. She was forever scratching that ugly red minus in the top right corner of my coloring book, for straying outside the lines. And those little buggers who had criticized me would smugly wave their coloring books at me with their precise work along with their shiny gold stars to prove it. I was only six-years-old and already, I felt like an utter failure.
One day, I finally managed to achieve the gold star. But try as I might, when I stayed within the lines and only used colors for the horse and swan that everyone else used, my teeth would clench and irritation flowed through me like hot soup. In the end, I’d grow surly. I still felt like a failure, for now I didn’t enjoy what I was doing. Not at all. I decided something must be wrong with me because secretly, I still loved the purple horse with its munificent hump scribbled outside the lines.
I suffered that gold star in silence.
Gathering pussy willows on crisp Minnesota mornings was more to my liking, as well. One by one, I’d painstakingly glue them onto construction paper in any form of a bunny or horse I chose, using that awesome white school paste that smelled—and tasted—divine. I was in heaven. And then there were those colorful hollyhocks that grew wild against worn fences. The frothy pink bells of their flowers, stuck together with toothpicks, became fabulous ball gowns adorning my Civil War-era ladies who waited breathlessly for that young officer and a gentleman to ask for the next dance.
On my own, I found my place outside the lines.
When my son began to color, I noticed he couldn’t seem to stay within the lines either. Diagnosed hyperactive and with learning differences, I let him color at home any which way he wanted, as long as he was happy with what he was doing. I’d learned from my own experience to put music on as a backdrop for him. Soon, I began to notice that the better the ‘fit’ of the music to his mood, the more bold grew his colors, and the further outside the lines he went. One day I saw him working on a purple horse.
“Nice horse,” I said.
“Yeah, Mom. It’s a magical horse. It can fly to the music and at night it flies around my room and into my dreams.” His face glowed with the rush of success.
He’s an adult now. Writes beautiful poetry, something I can’t seem to “catch” in the rhythm of my own flying purple dreams. My son’s gift, unique to him, began to emerge when he was in the sixth grade, just a few years after I taught him to journal and to write his garbled feelings down, something I had learned to do as an adult. I came to realize much later that my helping him to get in touch with his inner self was a precursor to my life’s work, a key in helping people tap into their strengths, gifts and creativity.
“Get the troublesome things out of you and onto paper,” I would tell him. “Underneath the negative, you will always find beauty.”
I never dreamed that teaching him to find his spirit would cause such creativity to pour forth. He is now a sound engineer, writes music and poetry, and teaches English to Hungarians in Budapest using creative techniques that brings students in asking for him in particular. Here was a kind of creativity that hadn’t so much as glimmered on the surface back then; his talents that emerged were such a dichotomy to his learning differences. I never imagined when he began journaling that he would end up writing poetry so poignant it would take my breath away. Or that he would one day stand by the ocean’s edge and play a tune on his saxophone so haunting that when the melody rode in on a gentle breeze through the window it would bring me to tears. I just kept playing music while he journaled, taught him to meditate in order to relax and let go, made pictures out of clouds scudding across the sky. Whatever it took to help him get in touch with his inner self, to find his true spirit, was my goal, because I’d learned that within our spirit lies our genius.
I helped him to color outside the lines.
What about you? Did you color outside the lines? Did you always want to write or was there a moment when you discovered you could? I’d love for you to leave a comment. I’ll choose two people at random to win a meditation CD ($20 value). The first track teaches you a gentle meditation technique and the second track is the guided meditation that helps you to relax and bring forth creativity. As a certified hypnotherapist, I wrote and produced Relax and Meditate. It is used by everyone from children to fighter pilots heading overseas. Thanks for stopping by.
I see this problem constantly with authors. They get so caught up in writing with “the rules” in mind, that they don’t write from their heart and it comes out in their books as stiff.
But what a great blog, you’ve given me something to think about with my own child and how I react to him.
Thank you, Lori. I know we need some rules, but I think it was Julia Quinn who said she breaks all the rules (one of her prologues is 18 pages long with several abrupt pov switches). I always want to break the rules when it comes to creativity. Who said we can’t do such and such? I love to watch children…left alone, they can create diamond dust out of sand, castles out of Dixie cups and pies out of mud! Don’t you love it?
I hate to admit this, but not only did I color within the lines, but I was very precise and even buffed my colors to a sheen – the first contest I ever won was a Captain Crunch coloring contest. Quite an honor…my prize was a Milton Bradley chess set. I’ve always been very precise in some ways, but very creative when it comes to the written word. I’ve been writing stories since I was a child, and wrote my first “romance” in Jr. High…the hero was named Henry, after the man I adored at that time, Henry Winkler, or as he was better known, The Fonz. Since then, my taste in men still runs to the bad boys (with stubble…ha..ha…Kathleen…wink…wink), at least on paper. Writing is my escape. I’d write even if I never published a word
Ha,Wendy…Thanks to the discussion on stubble the other day on HHRW, I decided to include some stubble in my current wip The Seduction of Sarah Banks. Gotta get as much sensory perception in as possible. A Captain Crunch coloring contest? Hey, that triggered something for me. I once one a jingle contest for Thom McCann shoes in California and won shoes for the entire family. My first contest win. I secretly adored The Fonz, too.
I, too, hate to admit that I had a compulsion to color within the lines. And colors had to be as close to what I considered “real” as possible. If I accidentally made a mark where it wasn’t “supposed” to be, I would often make a thick outline to cover it or draw something extra into the picture, like a bird on a tree, etc. I would also experiment with coloring techniques- light or heavy touch, mixing colors, adding my own inside lines, like apples in a tree, spots on a horse. But for some reason, I absolutely had to stay in the lines because it was what I “should” do!
I find it interesting that even though I encouraged my son to color outside the lines if he wanted, what he chose to do was the same thing I had done.
(I am clearly not a writer and am finding it very intimidating putting down even a single word on a blog where I see only really good writer’s comments. Maybe I’m finally learning to color outside the lines).
Hi Kathleen. What a beautiful post! I’ve loved writing stories ever since the first grade, as soon as I learned how. I was always the last in the class to hand mine in because there was always more to tell. Besides a ballet dancer or an astronaut, lol, a writer is all I ever really wanted to be. Unfortunately, for many years I let myself be talked into the notion that it wasn’t “practical.” Well, maybe not, but becoming published taught me that we should NEVER tell a child that his or her dream is unreachable.
Well, Ann, from where I’m sitting reading your post, I’d say there is a writer inside you! even though you didn’t color outside the lines, you still made it yours by doing the other things. It would be fun to take you on a series of “writing adventures” and help you find your muse! Thanks for stopping by and keep doing so!
Hi Allison,
I wanted to be a ballet dancer too! I used to go to class in rain, sleet or hail (right behing the postman, I was. lol), and in Hibbing, Minnesota, there was plenty of sleet and snow! I was determned, bu that wasn’t practical…interesting. I love that you wrote stories early. I constantly told them, but for some odd reason, never thought to write them down! Never thought of that before. I’m learning a lot here from my own post! Thanks for stopping by, lovely comment.
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I, too, colored within the lines. I don’t know if it was my strict Catholic upbringing or the fact that I was a people pleaser. This carried over into my adult life. Everything had to be perfect.
In college, I enjoyed writing very much and was known as a supreme “B-Ser” when it came to filling up those ‘blue books’. I could write convincingly about anything, it seemed– much to my professors’ chagrins. I remember one comment received from a professor declaring that I had a “fine flair for writing” but in the same sentence asked why I didn’t come to class. I guess I was finally trying to step out of that box.
When my son began kindergarten, his teachers complained to me that he refused to color within the lines and that his drawings had so many unusual colors. They feared, I think, that he didn’t have a good sense of reality, eye-hand coordination, or the like. When I questioned him about this, he promptly replied, “It’s okay, Mommy. I can just cut it out, anyway.” How perfectly delicious, I thought. I think I was a tad jealous!
I am a watercolor painter now but when I was a chld I colored everything, even the dog we had. We never had coloring books because they were expensive so we had plain or lined paper to use for our crayolas. And we only had 8 colors. My sister and I thought it was a treat to color the designs embossed on paper napkins. We asked our mother “What should I color?” and she would say The sun or the animals on the farm. I think the blank paper helped me to be more creative.
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