Like many girls, I was obsessed with horses when I was young. I played with horse toys, read horse books, drew horse pictures, and wrote horse stories. My favorite horses were spotted pintos, which lead me to another infatuation, this one with Native Americans.

Native Americans, then known as Indians, were always shown riding spotted pintos. I became captivated with their way of life and decided I wanted to be an Indian more than anything else in the world. 

But I didn’t want to be a modern Indian. I longed to be an Indian from the time when they wore buckskins and had braids decorated with feathers. When they rode horses, hunted buffalo across the prairie, and lived in teepees. I already had long hair to braid and wore a pair of Minnetonka moccasins. I even had a green plastic tent I played in.

Alas, even at a young age I knew my greatest wish could never come true, so I instead immersed myself in everything Indian in much the same way I had done with horses. 

Coloring was serious business to me as a kid, and nearly every one of my color books had pictures of either horses or Indians or both. There was a crayon called ‘Indian Red’, so of course it was my favorite color. I wore a number of them down to a nub coloring the skin of the Indians in my coloring books, refusing to use any other color. 

When I was around seven years old I had almost finished up my latest Indian coloring book and could hardly wait until it was done, and I could start in my new one. (That was one of my quirks. I wouldn’t start a new coloring book until I had colored every single page in the old one, even the pictures I didn’t like. I also kept my coloring books once they were filled up.)

I opened up the coloring book, Indian Red crayon in hand, and to my horror found one of the few remaining pictures in it had already been colored. But the finished page wasn’t colored neatly with the right colors. It was scribbled on!

I found out one of the younger neighborhood kids had been allowed to color in the book while I was in school. I was devastated. My book was ruined and there was nothing I could do about it. I half-heartedly colored the remaining pictures, all the joy I usually found in it missing.

Determined to never let anything like that happen again, before starting my new coloring book I wrote up a list of stipulations that had to be followed before coloring in it. The first rule wasn’t actually a rule. It said, “Whose coloring book?” followed by a blank line I wrote my name on.

Rule #2 – No people under 5 years old can color in it.

Rule #3 – No scribbling in the book.

Rule #4 – Ask before you color in it.

Rule #5 If you wrote your name on the picture it had to be at the bottom of the page. I absolutely hated it when people wrote their names at the top, artists are supposed to sign at the bottom. Everybody knew that.

Rule #6 – Color neatly.

When I was done I thought it looked very professional. I scotch taped it to the back of the cover, so it was the first thing someone would see when it was opened.

I found this coloring book a few weeks ago when I was cleaning out my art room. There weren’t any others with it, so I don’t why I saved this one. Apparently the rules must have worked, as there was no scribbling or names written at the top of the pages. Strangely enough, only a handful of pages were actually colored. Maybe the rules were so strict even I didn’t feel worthy enough to color in it.

Even though we can’t imagine it at the time, what’s most important to us continues to change throughout our lives. The condition of my coloring books was detrimental to me when I was seven. Today I wouldn’t have even remembered that if I hadn’t found the proof. 

Although it’s easier said than done, try to remember that. It may seem like the most important thing in the world, or feel like the worst time in your life, but there’s always tomorrow.