Do you remember Garanimals brand clothes? The original concept, as I understood it as a child, was that the different items of clothing were coded with animals that kids could match up so that their outfits would also match. So, for example, match a zebra pair of shorts with a zebra top and you’re sure you’re going to match. I thought this was awesome and begged for Garanimals clothing…you have to remember that I was five at the time. My parents either thought they were a little pricey or more likely a little too conformist for their leftist leanings and I only ever had one Garanimals outfit. It was in my favorite color—yellow! Bright sunshine yellow shorts with a yellow and white striped t-shirt to match. I loved them!
Yellow was my favorite color at the time. I even had a yellow bedroom with curtains and a bedspread covered with sunflowers. But my favorite color betrayed me that summer. As I often did, I fell sick while visiting my grandparents and had to go to the doctor. I was prescribed antibiotics for whatever happened to be ailing me, and I know now that what I was given was probably erythromycin which is one of the nastiest antibiotics out there. Erythromycin is particularly nasty in the suspension form which is of course what I was given as a child. I can still remember its taste and texture. I can also remember its particular shade of yellow. One night I was lying in bed at my grandmother’s house after taking a dose of the nasty stuff and my mom was reading to me. That medicine induced the most beautiful rainbow of projectile vomit imaginable. It even missed the end of the bed making a spectacular splat on the wood floor! Mom asked me why I didn’t tell her I was going to throw-up. “I didn’t know,” was my plaintive response. And forever after that experience with the nasty medicine I had to take for days and days, I dropped yellow as my favorite color; we were through.
As a child, I never really recovered from losing my favorite color. I tried out my best friend’s color for awhile—purple. But it didn’t really suit me. I settled on blue for a bit, but it was an ever changing preference once yellow and I were on the outs. Even now if you ask me what my favorite color is, I don’t have a ready answer; it just depends on my mood—I might say blue or green or orange but never yellow. These days yellow and I have come to an understanding. You’ll never see me wearing yellow, and I don’t go out of my way to pick yellow things like linens or dishes. But I do love yellow rooms—they make me happy. Yellow has regained its sunny disposition in my mind.
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