Poetry in Notion

Color Me Happy

“I don’t believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.” –Pablo Picasso

Even though I’ve had a smattering of art instruction and know color pretty well, I had a surprise once with pigment which will always color my thinking on the subject. I was getting some Martha Stewart interior wall paint at K-mart. I’d already painted my bathroom a lovely blush of pale peachy-pink to match the fixtures. I was thrilled with the color. Every time I walked into that room I felt happy. But it needed another coat. You could just see the unevenness of the color at the top and bottom of the wall where it had been cut in with the trimmer.

As I stood waiting for the young guy at the counter to mix the paint, he made a noise that sounded like “Oops”. I was in a bit of hurry and ignored his concern.

“Are you sure you want it?” He asked, referring to the gallon he’d mixed.

“How bad can it be?” I asked. I didn’t want him to get in trouble—he said he’d gone over a bit on the black.

“Black?”

He showed me the mixed and shaken paint. It looked fine. These days they can match a color so exactly it’s amazing. I bought it, took it home and applied it.

That tiny addition of a drop or so of black paint changed the color so dramatically I still can’t believe it. While I thought it might change after drying, and while I thought I could just live with it rather than go through all the trouble to go back to the store and repaint again, I was wrong on both counts. Instead of that rosy delightful room, I have lived with a color not unlike that of flesh that might be found in a funeral home. It’s the only way I can describe it.

Of course this kind of thing can go both ways. I have two wooden decks which I made the mistake of painting instead of staining. Now every year they exact a price by needing to be painted again. No matter how expensive the paint, it never lasts through an entire year. We intend to replace those decks due to age, so last year I decided to use the cheapest stuff I could find, since the old green stain was showing through.

I looked through the misfit collection of rejected paints and stains at Home Depot. Not much of a selection to go with my butter-yellow house. Well, there was one gallon of deck paint—guaranteed to last with a forty dollar price tag to match—for five bucks.  A dab on the lid showed a tint somewhere between a navy officer’s uniform and an eggplant. Wow. I dragged my feet and walked around the aisle again. Well, since purple and yellow are supposed to be complementary colors (they oppose one another on the color wheel) I reasoned, they might work. But the purple is so dark and the yellow is so light. . .

I finally decided those decks could go out with a last hurrah. Why not? I’m getting to an age where people either think you’re eccentric or crazy. Might as well give ‘em some evidence.

I asked my brother, a severe critic, who occasionally drives by at around 70 mph, “Did you see the color I painted my porches?”

“That really dark purple? Yeah, it looks really sharp! Makes your whole house look great.”

As I pondered this response, I noted that I had painted the two doors periwinkle the previous year. Who could know? Since then I’ve had countless compliments on this “choice”.

If only all accidents could turn out to be such happy ones.

Quote from a car insurance claim form: "The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him."