120: Yellow

It had to have been on sale for a really good price, right? As much as he hated his neighbors, were they really the type of asshole who would buy a car that color? Why would anyone buy a car that color? It wasn't quite the color of a banana. It wasn't quite the color of mustard. It wasn't even the color of a yellow caution sign. It just lay there. An uninspired, ugly, boring annoying color. 

The bright color made one think of a toy, but this would be one of those toys that languished on the shelf, a depressing, uninspired color that drained the life from you just to look, improving with each layer of dust until it was shoved to the very back of the shelf and hidden behind a collection of stuffed animals. The stuffed animals hadn't been placed there. They'd just sort of migrated to that spot to hide that ugly toy.

And there it was, parked on the street, always in the corner of his peripheral vision.

How did it even come to be? In an era where car manufacturers only painted in blacks and grays and whites and dealers purchased an even more limited selection, who looked at a soiled diaper and thought "I want a color even less pleasing to the eye?"  Was there a mistake in the factory? Had the mixing machine had a failed software patch or a broken spray nozzle? Was this the winning bet in a "design a truly hideous paint color" contest?  Was the purchase itself even a part another bet?  Did someone win because the car sold at all?

Snapping his fingers he thought maybe he finally had it - perhaps his neighbors were colorblind. Yes, that must be it, he thought to himself. Perhaps they could only see in shades of gray. Perhaps the color was a nice gray, like battleship painted in eggshell with several clearcoats. That helped. Now he felt sorrow and pity for these pool colorblind neighbors and at the same time envy - they must have no idea how disgustingly banal their infectious ooze-colored car was.

Sill, he decided that was no consolation - the car would probably never be hit. Unless its color drove someone to madness, in typical everyday driving, it was more likely that anyone that looked it at would reflexively jerk the wheel away, causing the car to blissfully drive down the street leaving revulsion and collisions in its wake.