I’m solo-manning the kids’ coloring station at the art fair.
Left unsupervised, I decide to play a game with myself: By the end of my shift, I want the four giant, flower-themed white boards to showcase the co-imagined artistry of Kansas City’s youth.
I pop a squat and start filling in some petals to entice others to join.
Kids and adults alike sporadically fill in spots, each with a unique dry-erase coloring style.
Eventually, a group comes over with a young boy and girl – preschool age and younger. They go wild on their respective boards. These kids are unbound by the oppressive black lines giving form to the insects and floral patterns. It’s as if the board were a blank canvas.
A sassy man walks up, either a friend or an uncle.
“I love the way you color outside the lines,” he affirms them. “Art doesn’t need to follow rules.”
The boards look fabulous.
A girl walks up to a board, gives a bee’s wings a smattering of blue, then parses through the marker jar.
“Where’s the yellow?” she asks.
“Ah – this set doesn’t have a yellow,” I say. “We’ve got bright green and orange, though.”
She says nothing and walks away. I grab the red, uncork the lid and give the bee luxurious crimson neck fuzz. Just becuzz.
Another large group ambles up. A well-kempt boy of elementary school age and his younger brother both approach the bee picture. They must be coming from church. The younger one takes his finger and erases the bee’s red fuzz. I offer up an eraser, abetting myself to the offense.
The boy wipes the slate clean – a heinous act.
“Color anywhere you want,” their grandmother says, “as long as it’s inside the lines.”
He does a spotty but neat job. The older one finishes a respectable fill on the butterfly wings.
Before they walk away, they wipe the slates clean again.
I hide the erasers.
Henceforth, after each substantial addition to the boards, I take a picture. These colors, as with all things young and beautiful, are temporary.
I take stock at the white frames and notice some marks got on them – reusable frames if maintained. I try to wipe them off with cleaner and a paper towel, but most of the markings hang on. I give up, trying to mentally match which kids made them.
Then it hits me: By golly, there’s life in these marks.
I jot down notes for this post in my moleskin, in which my daughter scribbled on half the pages. I now appreciate the mark she left. I haven’t seen her in three hours. But here she is – chaos in ink form.
Near the end of my shift, a gentleman walks up by himself – late 30s/early 40s. Tan skin with dark, silver-flecked hair. He grabs a green and gives life to a lonely little leaf. He caps the marker and looks up at me, with a “look what I just did” sort of smile.
“I haven’t colored since I was 6,” he says. Then he goes his merry way.
His leaf is beautiful. He stayed inside the lines and everything.
