Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

In an attempt to go back to reality, adults are returning to coloring books.

Everyone has a smartphone, a tablet, a computer, or all of these. You move the mouse, the cursor moves, and lines and colors and all that appear on the screen. Press control-P and the printer produces the paper with the art.

Golly, that is neat. Gosh, that is sterile.

Well, now we have the return of the coloring books.

The move to computers and tablets and smartphones and all that stuff has pushed away from the feel of crayons in our hands as we drag them across paper. So we go back to the crayons as much as we can.

Perhaps that is one reason I write in a journal everyday. I hold a pen in my hands and drag it across paper. I feel the friction and the bumps on the paper.

It is wonderful.

My grandchildren like to color. I color with them. Everyone else thinks I am being so nice to sacrifice my time and waste it coloring. Little do they know.