I have three memories of kindergarten, two of which involve my five-year old penchant for something like vandalism, and one of which involves me feeling sorry for a color.
I’d rather not discuss the vandalism, thank you.
On a particularly memorable day, our teacher had listed colors (with samples) up on the board: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black. She went around the class asking each child their favorite color: she would put a marker next to each color that got a vote, so we could see which color “won”. I was in the back of the class, second to last. I knew what my favorite color was, of course (purple) but I noticed that every color had at least two marks by it except one — yellow. When she got to me, I blurted out “yellow” as my favorite color.
Yellow had no friends. I felt so sorry for it. I knew what that felt like. From that day onward, I have proudly claimed yellow as my favorite color.
I actually chose my favorite US soccer team by picking team with yellow jerseys, the Columbus Crew team. I live nowhere near Ohio, nor have I ever.
But they’re yellow, and I won’t abandon my favorite color.
The yellow brick road is a famous yellow thing. I was completely enamored by the (Wizard of) Oz world as a child, but not nearly so much the movie as the book(s). If you are a fan of the book series, as my brother and I were, you realize that the movie makes huge changes in the plot — like Oz not being a real place (in the movie), which is completely different than the book.
If you’ve never read the original Oz books you’ve missed out on something wonderful — often wonderfully silly, but sometimes frightening or dramatic, and always amazingly imaginative.
Many of the yellow things of life kind of suck. Like school buses, for instance. The ride might be five minutes or 50, but during that time, kids will recreate The Lord of The Flies as closely as is humanly possible.
Raincoats and rainboots were famously always yellow when I was a child, presumably for visibility. The boots didn’t stay yellow for long.
When my first marriage ended, we lived in the house for another couple of years before I remarried and we moved a few miles away.
The hardest day for me during that time was the day I found one of my older son’s yellow Tonka trucks abandoned in the back yard when going through the yard one last time. Suddenly, I remembered everything, every emotion: the desire you have to make a family, to make it work, to watch your children grow old together — and I realized it was all gone, like his childhood, and I just stood there and cried — a thirty-seven year old man, looking at a dirty yellow truck.
You might think I would have more happy memories of yellow, it being my favorite color and all, but I don’t seem to. Well maybe one, of the first time I saw this famous face:
You are adorable! No one is not supposed to say things like that in public and that’s why we have those little yellow smiley faces. Isn’t our society weird? And most people package themselves in black or at least very neutral colors like grey now a days.( If i ever get my post on my recent visit to the MFA assembled you’ll see what i mean.) Anyway i am inept and don’t know how to make the smiley face in the reply -but here is one.
LikeLiked by 1 person