I have questions: why are adult coloring books so popular and what is it that makes them so? A related inquiry is: what makes a coloring book an adult coloring book as opposed to a regular one?

Right away, problems pop up. The answers may come only after consultation with behavioral psychologists and by analyzing statistically relevant polling data. Which brings to mind an observation by Mark Twain: “If you eat a live frog first thing in the morning nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.”

But I don’t want to swallow the frog of behavioral psychology and descriptive statistics in an attempt to understand a coloring book.

Suppose I did though, swallow that frog. I’d still have to face the issue of market analysis. Discerning the psychology behind this coloring activity would only take me part way to an answer. The question of how those psychological insights are utilized to motivate people to purchase adult coloring books would remain unanswered. As you see, it gets complicated.

So, I have decided to bypass the frogs of complication and jump – pardon the pun – directly to an analysis. Clearly, this narrative should not be cited as an authoritative source for it’s not one.

I think the people buying adult coloring books are folks someone has always been proud of for one reason or another. Staying within the lines for them is an affirmation of most everything else they’ve ever done.

Not so for many. There are those of us who have had to struggle with lines, those minimum lines our artwork and other school work would routinely fall below. When mine dipped thus I would secrete it, along with the accompanying admonishing teacher’s note, beneath our neighbor’s dog house. Though I have received adult coloring books from well meaning friends and relatives I would never buy one. Why would I pay out good money for the resurrection of childhood memories that have taken years to overcome?

Those of us who could never master threading an 8mm movie projector, who applied their academic potential to gazing out windows and conjuring dreams, whose artistic efforts transgressed edges and ran off pages; we are the people excluded by adult coloring book focus groups.

Folks whose paths through life have been clearly marked and followed or who were capable of successfully blending the contrasting shades of their life’s experiences, they are the folks to whom these books are aimed. It is to promote sales to them that marketing dollars are directed.

Focus group facilitators have elicited the revelations needed to determine which pictures should be included – none are for me. The lines are too close and there are no numbers to guide the color combinations.

Which leads me to the answer to the question: what constitutes an adult coloring book? It’s a coloring book that a regularly constituted adult can color but one that can’t be colored by kids like me.

Doug Pugh’s Vignettes run bi-weekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached via email at pughda@gmail.com.