One day, I was listening to something that sparked many thoughts about many different subjects. As I was driving, I dictated these thoughts as email messages to myself. I automatically put any email I send to myself in a folder of notes. I try to take pictures of things that happen in my life so I can write about them later, but other times I just have a thought about a certain subject. My mind works much faster than my mouth, so I do my best to get the thoughts out with as many words as I can speak. Let’s start with a simple one. It’s about colors.
My message on colors simply said to talk about what different colors mean to me. The only example I could come up with was my mom’s favorite color. It was green. The color seemed to come from her fondness for mallard ducks. The dark green of their heads appealed to her. She had collections of mallard ducks all around the house. This got passed down to me and I developed a liking for green as well. For me, it was short-lived. I was constantly changing what my favorite color was.
One of my favorite colors was orange when I was young. Tigers were to blame for this preference. I chose tigers as my favorite animal from a young age. There were posters, stuffed animals, and other assorted items all around my room. Because Garfield had orange fur and stripes like a tiger, I also collected items with his image on them. The top item was my Garfield phone. When you picked up the phone from his back, his eyes would open. Putting the phone back would close his eyes. Eventually, I tired of collecting Garfield items, but I still got them as presents for years after. My love of tigers continues to this day.
Patti likes pink. It’s kind of cliché, but that’s what favorite colors are. You want to see things around you that make you happy, and for Patti, that’s pink. She also loves cats. If you can combine pink with cats, she explodes with pink glitter. Because of the Dodgers, she likes Dodger blue. Our den is a shrine to the Dodgers, and that involves a great deal of Dodger blue. When I’m giving her a present, I must decide between pink and Dodger blue to adorn it. If I could find a pink cat dressed in Dodger blue, I would have found the greatest Patti gift ever.
One color I don’t like is red. To me, it is associated with danger, emergencies, and foreboding. Blood, Republicans, and horror movies use red to remind us of negative things we should avoid. When I see people with red cars, I want to avoid those people. There is a paint company whose motto is a globe being covered in red paint. Every time I see it, I wonder what the ad executive was thinking when they proposed it. It just looks like they’re covering the world in blood. I picture it as a symbol of the Nazi Party, not a paint company. If you like red, I’m sorry but I find you creepy. I’d rather hang out with someone who really likes yellow. It’s weird, but it’s not creepy.
No discussion of colors would be complete without talking about brown. It is all the other colors combined. Whenever someone talks about not knowing what colors make other colors, I feel sorry for those people. This means they’ve never had an art class, mixed paints, or thought about orange, green, or purple. When you mix red, yellow, and blue together, you get different combinations of brown. In many ways, brown is my favorite color of all time. Primary colors yell, secondary colors speak authoritatively, and brown whispers from the background. Wood is brown, but it is a mixture of several different browns. It can vary from black to light brown. They don’t create the colors in a lab. The colors grow from the ground, which is also different shades of brown. Each of the different shades influences the other. It is not so much a color as it is a texture. You want to feel wood. Okay, I wrote that sentence before I read it. Let’s just say my favorite color is tan and leave it at that.
Thoughts from Life 
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