Having a friend who is a professional coloring-book artist can be rewarding at times. For example, when my niece celebrated her sixth birthday in March of this year, my friend created a series of coloring-book pages for her, in which she was featured as the primary character. They were of top quality, and he refused to let me pay him for this. Additionally, when my mother was hospitalized a couple of years ago due to a liver ailment, my friend painted a portrait of her favorite flower — a lavender iris — which we were able to hang on the wall over her bed until she was well enough to be released.
My friend has always been generous with his time and talents, but recently I have noticed that he has been preoccupied with worry. In talking with him last week, I finally found out that he was preparing to file for bankruptcy.
The act of filing for bankruptcy carries with it a lot of stigma. In fact, for this very reason, I have decided not to include his name in this article, as a friendly gesture of confidentiality to him.
Recent statistics reveal that 789,000 people filed bankruptcy in 2006 (according to principles stated in the book Young, Old, and in Between: Who Files for Bankruptcy?). To put this statistic into perspective, you need simply to consider the fact that year after year, bankruptcy rates rival divorce rates. We have all been affected by divorce in one way or another; whether we know it or not, bankruptcy similarly affects our lives. Although its presence in our communities is silent, its results are dramatic.
While I am also keeping the causes of my friend’s bankruptcy a secret, suffice it to say that he has always tried to make the best financial decisions possible, and furthermore he has done little to squander the resources available to him. Rather, he is something of a victim of a handful of misfortunes. There is no shame in his situation.
Being a coloring book artist has afforded him an opportunity to not become overwhelmed by the financial quagmire of bankruptcy. He says that no matter how bad his day is going, drawing always gives him a fresh perspective on life. Recently, depressed about his rising credit card bills, he decided to create a coloring book about his situation. However, instead of drawing himself, he chose to use a circus clown as the main character of the drawings.
The circus begins, with a ringleader, lions, elephants, and even a seal balancing a ball on its nose. Then, a barrel is rolled out into the center of the circus by a gorilla, and out of the barrel pops a clown. The clown honks his nose in front of the lions, and he throws confetti. The lions roar with delight. Then, the clown pulls a bag of peanuts from his suit pocket, and he feeds the elephants. Finally, he goes over to the gorilla, and he teaches the gorilla how to blow up balloons for him to do tricks with. The clown twists the balloons into funny shapes, passing them out to children in the audience. Everything is going great until the clown runs out of his balloons, peanuts, and confetti. Suddenly, the animals are displeased, and the people begin to boo him. The animals angrily surround him, and he is forced to climb a ladder up to a tightrope, where he is followed by the gorilla. The final pages of the coloring book show the clown walking the tightrope, taking careful steps with his big floppy shoes, and trying not to fall off. Unfortunately, he does fall into a bucket of water, and he is left sitting there with a silly expression on his face.
My friend explained that the circus in his coloring book represented the fickle nature of the economy. Just as quickly as the economy is giving you a boost, it starts to throw tomatoes at you. The animals represent Big Business, Credit Card Comapnies, and Banks. (I know, this all seems a little complex for a coloring book, but it definitely provided my friend a means of using his art to terms with the circumstances he found himself in.) Finally, of course, the image of the clown trying to walk the tightrope while wearing big, floppy clown shoes represented the absurd challenge of trying to eliminate debt without sufficient means of doing so. When the clown ends up falling into the bucket of water, my friend says, his fate mirrors that of my friend, who in real life has fallen into bankruptcy.
Of course, while my friend doesn’t expect children to imagine any darker meaning existing behind the images of his coloring book as they fill them with color, he does hope that the children will receive helpful lessons from his drawings. “When you are faced with challenges, you should do your best and never give up,” he says, “even though you fall, it’s not always your fault . . . so, just take life in stride.”
I am inspired by my friend’s optimistic attitude. I haven’t let him know this, but sometimes when I visit my niece, I borrow her crayons and I add some color to the pictures of the clown.
I brighten his smile, and I fill in his outfit with bold colors, hoping to supply him with encouragement in the middle of the craziness of a circus life.
