The Baboon Congress

Coloring Books

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Header: Michael Maggs [CC BY-SA 3.0 ] via Wikimedia Commons

Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

I’m a meeting doodler. I discovered years ago that if I doodle during my twice-monthly department meeting, they go faster and I am less frustrated. I used to sit in the back corner of the room so that my doodling wouldn’t distract anyone but several years back, my boss invited me to sit at the main table, doodles and all. Last fall one of my co-workers brought me a mandala design and a couple of colored pencils (with my boss’ permission). It was fun to do something a little different than my usual doodle designs.

Since that day, I’ve seen quite a few news stories about the new coloring book fad for grown-ups. Every book store and craft store has piles of coloring books and Fortune magazine published a bit about coloring books being a big boost for book sales in 2015. There are also plenty of articles about why coloring books are such a big hit right now. Some say that it lets adults to be more creative than their daily lives allow. Others say that coloring relieves stress. Another theory is that coloring books allow people to ditch technology, a return to their gadget-free childhoods.

So what does it say about me that I received THREE different coloring books for the holidays, complete with colored pencils, a huge set of markers and even some sketch `n sniff pencils?

What takes you back to your childhood?

63 thoughts on “Coloring Books”

  1. Maps. My dad was in the Air Force and we moved quite a bit. Then when we finally settled down in the Fargo-Moorhead area, we continued with summer vacation travel. I was recently able to trace our path from Alabama to Vermont. Although I sometimes use the GPS phone systems, I prefer paper maps. They give me a larger perspective as to where I am, what’s around me and where I’m going.

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    1. I have to admit, I love paper maps too. But it doesn’t take long before I mis-fold them, and they wind up as misshapen paper clumps tossed in the trunk of the car.

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      1. i find bending them to meet my needs just adds charachter. i love the 16×20 atlas for the usa and canada in the back seat with the blow up of the state at hand if im getting off. if im just driving through the rand mcnalley is fine. good gray roads comes to mind on the back roads truips i used to taake theose dotted and sashed lines were the scenic routes.

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    2. I acquired some old maps while helping my aunt go through her stuff. I wish they would have printed dates on maps. One of them shows the Twin Cities metro area and suburbs, but some of the place names differ. There’s no Burnsville or Apple Valley, but in that area I find Nichols and Radio Center. Edina is on the map, but appears to be northeast of Richfield, quite close to the airport.

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      1. Sometimes you can find a tiny copyright tucked in someplace.

        The s&h’s US History teacher has a small map of the US highway system published by Standard Oil pre-interstates. Draws me like a magnet-don’t know why.

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        2. Spent the whole time in the waiting room. Interesting in it’s way, but did not extend to fascinating. Contrary to what a) the courthouse website, b) a practising attorney and c)someone who had recently served, I was not allowed my knitting, even in the waiting room.

          I’m trying to get mentally back on track as that week really derailled every good intention I had for 2016.

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        3. My jury duty in Nicollet County was insulting. Too long a story to tell. We were not allowed to do anything in the waiting room, except in Nicollet County you are called for six weeks but they only call in 25 on the rare day of a trial. Then you only wait 2-4 hours. Mostly you then go home because it was settled out of court. Jury members are just cattle to the system. Then when day after a four hour wait, the judge called in all 25 of us and chewed us out for 40 minutes.

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        4. Clyde – reminds me of what Tom Wolfe wrote in Bonfire of the Vanities: “The system was fed, and those vans brought in the chow. Fifty judges, thirty-five law clerks, 245 assistant district attorneys, one D.A. – the thought of which made Kramer twist his lips in a smile.”

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  2. I have a stand mixer in my kitchen, an old Hamilton Beach like the one my mother had. Mixing up some cookie dough or brownie batter in that mixer will do the trick. Nothing like the aroma of cookies baking.

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  3. Ah, for food: I just made fried potatoes, and I managed to get them just the way my mom used to make ’em. Also chicken gumbo burgers, and her pancakes (for which, luckily, I have the recipe).

    Also things like seeing kids at an outdoor ice skating rink. And I saw a snow fort the other day that was just like what we used to make – an arc of snow wall that gets shorter on the sides…

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  4. I also bought coloring books, VS, for the grandkids this Christmas, though I’m sure they have plenty from birthday parties, etc. My mom has one, but can’t get past the idea that they’re for children. And we have one that we’re going to get around to using any day now – I imagine it would be relaxing, if I could get myself to sit down at some table for long enough…

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    1. Daughter and I bought one for Husband. He has used it some, though he claims he is “not good” at coloring. I have taken up the mantra that everyone is good at coloring – staying inside the lines or no – and anyone who tries to tell a kid now within my earshot that they “aren’t good” at coloring is going to get a stern talking to from me. Pssh. Not good. Maybe they don’t stay inside the lines…so what. Makes it sound like there are rules for something that should just be personal and creative.

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  5. I enjoyed keeping tropical fish in aquariums as a kid. My interest in tropical fish started when I was in grade school and continued through my first year in high school. One of my granddaughters has an aquarium containing some tropical fish. I have a large book that includes descriptions of many kinds of tropical fish. It was one my favorite books when I was young. I was a little disappointed when my granddaughter, who keeps tropical fish, didn’t seem to have much interest in checking out that book.

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  6. Many things take me back. I don’t respond to coloring books so much as I do to crayons. That smell! Kites always take me back. The sight of marbles. Jigsaw puzzles on a rainy day. Viewmasters. Old fashioned radios with lighted dials and speakers covered with fabric. The fishing gear I used as a kid. Some books.

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  7. Eating popsickles. I love them still. Also curling up with a mystery novel on a hot day (or a really cold day) and not moving until I finished the book. Any books by Lloyd Alexander

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  8. I’m a sucker for lemonade stands. I love the memory of my mother letting us have a table out on the sidewalk and then letting us keep the nickels and pennies even though it was her money that paid for the Kool-Aid and sugar.

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  9. Uninterrupted free time.

    Thought I had a day of that ahead of me, but no. Practice for and activity immediately following another activity is in fact not at school, but at somebody’s house, too far to walk in the time.

    And before someone suggests s&h should just get his license, remember, we are a one car family (and seriously, you should al be glad he is not eager to drive).

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    1. You’re right about the one car, two drivers conundrum. It stinks. One of the happiest days of the last 20 years was the day Young Adult bought her first car!

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        2. 10cars 4 drivers turned into 4 cars 5 drivers with one more int he shopa and gave one away to cover an iou. oh and a motorcycle

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  10. Any old tool that I recognize, and I recognize a great many old tools, my father having been a jack of all old trades. Mostly I see them in antique stores, or I sometimes just hunt them up. I bet none of you know what a “hardy” is, without now looking it up.
    Swings in trees, except I see that once a decade. Smell of hay. Border collies. Calves out in a field, except you see that once every half-decade.Blue or green tinted mason jars.

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  13. Blanket forts; swing top bottles with home made juice; hot chocolate. Jump rope, especially double Dutch, and let’s not forget the trusty hula hoop.

    I, too, love maps. The GPS is handy for certain things, but out on the open road, you can’t beat a good road map.

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    1. Daughter and I haven’t made a fort in far too long…she may be past them. Alas. I don’t think she realized that making forts with her brought me back to being seven or eight and sleeping in them overnight was as much for me as it was for her…

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  14. Ah, yes, maps. As it happens, I just finished a quite short story for my short story collection about The Arrowhead. This story has a companion story, yet to be completed. This is based very strongly on me and maps as a child. I did as a child sit on the hill and did trace lines like this.
    https://birchwoodhill.wordpress.com/

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  15. The smell of home-made navy bean soup. It was my very favorite meal that my mother would make once in a while. We had to walk home several blocks to eat lunch and I can still remember smelling that soup a block away from home. I make the soup now every now and then, but don’t know how to make it for one, so I eat it every day for a week then get sick of it for another half year

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    1. Ha! I remember those soups, but without nostalgia. (Most readers probably know Cb is my sister, so we are talking about the same soups.) That bean soup offered a heckuva lot of starch but little flavor. I do, however, remember one batch of that soup fondly. Mom had a bad day in the kitchen, resulting in an explosion with her Presto pressure cooker. There were no fatalities, but one result was a kitchen ceiling generously decorated with little white beans. My memory is that the beans were up there on the ceiling there for weeks, but that’s a slur on my mother’s housekeeping skills, and I couldn’t swear they were up there that long.

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      1. That explosion was my fault. Mom left me in charge of watching the little thingy on the lid so that when it wiggled, I was supposed to turn off the burner. I got confused when it wiggled and turned the fire UP. It didn’t take long before the lid blew off and bean soup shot up to the ceiling. It traumatized me to the extent that I never went near a pressure cooker again.

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      1. Saw it last night at the Riverview and loved it.

        Also happy to see the Riverview PACKED. First time ever we were in a line that stretched down the block. Next movie had a line like that too. Go Riverview!

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  17. Last year, the Minnesota History Center had a show of retro toys. I went and it was mostly disappointing, since many of the toys were more of my kid’s era, rather than my own. Lark toys in Kellogg, Minnesota has a far better collection.
    It was fun, though, to see a Gilbert Chemistry Set, Erector Set, Lincoln Logs and Crazy Ikes. I had forgotten, and was reminded, that at one time I had a Fort Apache set with the fort and plastic figures of Rin Tin Tin, Rusty, Sgt. Biff and the rest of the gang.

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    3. Bill we used to take two-week vacations at a north woods MN resort in the 1950s. On one of those we had a spell of rain move in. My parents told me they’d brought a surprise gift for rainy weather: a Fort Apache playset: stockade, soldiers brandishing swords, Indians with bows, horses, cattle. Talk about a happy kid!

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  19. music takes me back, my fair lady, south pacific, oklahoma, west side story the flower drum sonf the king and i, then peter and the wolf rusty in orchestra land, manners can be fun, baseball cards in bicycle spokes, leave it to beaver, dick van dyke, andy of mayberry, roy rogers the lone ranger, walking on a trail in the woods by the river, riding a bike, coloring for sure. i like it better with no lines to color in on the page just doodle and make revisions, other peoples kids couldnt understand how you color on a blank page and it took tthem a while to understand that its not against the rules, my kids got it but seldom did it. they just aknowledged having a weird dad. singing, walking in a warm rain, swinging on a rope swing, getting waer up my nose swimming, every now and again i run into flavors usually in candies that take me back, chicken bones was a favorite kind of butterscotch on the outside and a frangelica tasiting hazelnut paste in the middle, butter rum life savers, mint gummies leaf shaped if i remember right, those red raspberry hard candies with the juice inside, black snaps in the box that you can whistle through, mounds bars, heath bars, butternut, salted nut rools nut goodie a lunch of skippy super chunk and red raspberry jelly on wonder bread, hot dog with mustard and chips with ketchup, vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and peanuts on top, it goes on and on,

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  22. This is a game I’ve never seen discussed on the blog, but it’s one that I can’t believe is unique to Danish kids: playing ball against a wall. It usually involved two or three balls, and verse that were recited in unison with various tricks. Ball thrown behind ones back, ball thrown between ones legs, etc. Anyone?

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