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Are They Blind?
Ed had made a huge grid of paint squares on the wall. The guest room looked like The Hollywood Squares. We stared at the grid for a long time. “Paul Lynde isn’t that bad,” I said.“I could live with Charo,” said Ed.
After a half hour of this, we had to accept the fact that we didn’t care for any of them. We had just spent more money on sample-size jars of paint than we’d spent on the wasted gallon of Peace Yellow. We’d been taken by the names, by peaches that turned out to be first aid supplies. This is the surprising thing about people who name paint colors: Many are color-blind. How else to explain why Bonfire is dark red or Greenfield Pumpkin is brown? Ed pointed out that I have never visited Greenfield, nor looked upon its winter squashes. “You don’t know, really,” he said. “Could be something in the water there.”
If only to get away from the depressing home decor scenario playing itself out in the guest room, I went downstairs and Googled pumpkin and Greenfield. I couldn’t find an image of a Greenfield pumpkin, but I did find a news item headlined “Pumpkin Launcher Accident in Greenfield, New Hampshire.” The operator of a catapult built for pumpkin-chuckin’ contests was knocked out when the device hit him on the chin.
“What color is the pumpkin launcher?” Ed asked. Lo and behold, it was brown. Ed surmised that Greenfield Pumpkin was a Benjamin Moore typo and that the person who named it had actually called it Greenfield Pumpkin Launcher.
“You know,” said Ed, looking at the chip, “it’s kind of nice.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Matches the rug.”
And so we went with Greenfield Pumpkin Launcher.
What’s tickling your funny bone? Write to Mary Roach.
From Reader's Digest - January 2008
Mary Roach finds humor in odd places, and also her car keys.
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