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Food Fast Companies Use Red And Yellow In Their Logos

Sometimes as an elementary school kid I would just simply luck out. An announcement would come over the brown loudspeaker in class to announce that in the afternoon in the auditorium we would be having a Snake Show. Maybe this is just a northern Alabama thing, I don’t know. But what I do know is the entire school got to skip Social Studies once a year to see The Snake Man share his crazy collection of snakes onstage.

Cobras, water moccasins, racers, and even a giant anaconda which he let a group of volunteers hold in a group effort. Every once in a while, he would purposely (“accidently”) let a snake slither off the display table onto the stage of the floor. And whenever that happened, a piercing scream filled the non air conditioned room as many of the girls (and boys) yelled in terror at the top of their lungs.

The Snake Man defined what it meant to have a backwoods country Southern accent, like the kind State Troopers have in Virginia. He had these old fashioned jokes that he thought were hilarious. And by the 4th grade, I had memorized his routine. When he pulled out the albino rattlesnake, he would always say: “The reason this snake is white is because of lack of pigment in his genes. Now I don’t mean blue jeans…” At the end of the show, he gave us all some tips on how to know which snakes were poisonous and which were not. And I will never forget this:

“Red and black, you can pet his back. Red and yella, will kill a fella.”

After the days of Snake Shows were done, I was part of DECA, a Marketing class and club in high school. I loved it. I was actually good at it. We had competitions and got to travel. In the class I learned some neat behind-the-scenes stuff about advertising. One of the things was this: Fast food restaurants usually only use two colors for their signs: Red and yellow.

A quick Wikipedia search of some of the meanings of these colors is interesting. Red: exit, energy, passion, love. Yellow: Slow, fun, happiness, friendship, hope. A person is driving along, sees the red and yellow sign, and subconsciously thinks, “I need to SLOW down and EXIT here, because I have a PASSIONATE LOVE for that food. It brings me HAPPINESS and HOPE, not to mention ENERGY. And Ronald McDonald is my FRIEND.”

It’s hard to find an exception to the red and yellow fast food sign rule. McDonald’s, Burger King, Hardees (Carl’s Jr.), Krystal, Sonic, In-N-Out Burger, Taco Bell, Arby’s, Wendy’s, Popeye’s, Pizza Hut, Bojangle’s. A Google image search will cease any doubts.

Red and yella will kill a fella. Applies to snakes and food.

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What is the Point of a Man Wearing a Bathrobe?

Men wearing robes. More of an abstract concept than anything.

In movies sometimes, men wear robes when they’re getting ready for bed. Often, villains wear them while scheming with their henchmen inside of a mansion. In real life, I only see men’s robes if I stay in a really nice hotel or B&B- I usually am given the option to purchase one from the room for about 65 bucks. But I never drop the cash for it. As far as actually walking around the house in one, I haven’t yet had that privilege.

Though In 1984 I did have a Gizmo robe that I wore every night. But that was 25 years ago.

 

I do hold this romanticized idea of coming home from work, slipping into a burgundy robe with matching slippers, and to make sure I fit the whole stereotype, I would slick back my hair. I would keep a pipe in the pocket of my robe- not to smoke sweet smelling tobacco, but only to give a better “robes man” image to unexpected guests. A glass of wine would help the persona as well. Just poured from a cheap $8 bottle from Macaroni Grille- my unexpected guests from Connecticut wouldn’t know the difference by sight alone.

It would help if the first room my unexpected guests saw when they came over was a dim-lit “study” where a comprehensive library of classic English literature was on display, while also on my mahogany shelf were three immaculate model sailboats. And a bear skin rug. And something from Africa too, like a tribal shield. Not only am I sophisticated, but I am a world traveler.

 

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Dr. Deja Vu: The Magically Disappearing Friend

In elementary school, it was quite normal to spend years alongside a friend (or at least a friendly acquaintance) then to come back one Fall and after a few weeks of research, only to hear from a teacher or classmate, “Oh, his family moved away during the summer.” And what could I really do or say? Those concrete words became the end of it. Even as a kid, the realization was simple: Sometimes friends disappear forever.

All I was left with was an inch tall, black and white picture in the yearbook to remember them by. No e-mail address or phone number. Just gone.

There was the blonde haired, red-skinned Jesse Jackson who sat across from me in Kindergarten and got in trouble for making Debi Owen cry when he called her “stupid”. And Katy Petzold who moved after 3rd grade, whom I never had a class with or ever talked to, but her weird last name always stood out to me when I saw it in the yearbook. And she must have worn her green Girl Scouts uniform to school a lot because that’s how I remember her.

Ferne Taylor- I sat next to her in 3rd grade while we were reading Charlotte’s Web and everyone bugged her because Fern is the name of the girl in the story. And I also remember her flattening a Coke can to decorate it with buttons to look like a woman, then Justin Burt sang, “Ugly woman, walking down the street”, as he walked the tin can woman across his desk. It was hilarious. (That’s always what I think of when I hear “Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison, now.)

Zack Bain- a cool kid that loved to play basketball and when he had to draw a personalized license plate for his 5th grade homeroom teacher Mrs. Jones’ class, it read “PARTIER”. She hung it up outside her room on the bulletin board and every time I walked by it I thought, “Really? Surely his Ninja Turtle birthday party wasn’t as cool as mine…”

And of course the classic Jon Peterson with his precise chili bowl haircut who moved away after 4th grade, whose dad always smoked a sweet smelling pipe in the den, wore sweater vests, and worked at the First Methodist Church. I’m sure today these 28 year-olds would have no idea who I am, but I remember them clearly.

I have memories of these random people, now serving as wallpaper in the attic of my brain. Obviously, I have already searched for them on facebook and Google, with no results. It’s strange to think that somewhere out there these long lost classmates are living normal lives just like the rest of us. And surely they have to remember spending their first couple of years in that small school back in Alabama in the late ‘80’s. Who do they remember from my school? Would the people they remember in turn remember them?

People come and go. But when they go, they go somewhere. Sometimes forever a mystery.

“If you’ll be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal.” –Paul Simon (“You Can Call Me Al”)

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The Token Guitar Guy who Thinks He’s Cool Because He Can Play “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton

One in every ten guitar players is a “cool guitar guy”. That’s a guitar player who uses his musical abilities as a social crutch. In college, Cool Guitars Guys were easy to spot: They could be found conveniently playing on a sidewalk near the dorms with the most females. Their favorite songs to play for people include, but are not limited to “Sweet Home Alabama”, “Tears in Heaven”, “Stairway to Heaven”, “Enter Sandman”, and “Wonderwall”. Cool Guitar Guys don’t really have to sing much more than the chorus, just the main guitar licks. Because once the familiar part of the song is played, a token instant-fan or two will feed Cool Guitar Guy with “Oh, I love this song!” Of course you do.

Cool Guitar Guys usually have faces that are fist magnets, like Spencer Pratt. They always have this tendency to break Man Code, spouting off how much they loved the movie The Notebook, in an effort to show their sensitive side to the girl listeners in their small audience. And if they can find a reason to talk about kids, they will go and on about how much they love their nieces and nephews (to convince prospective dates they would make a good husband one day).

Granted, Cool Guitar Guy isn’t taken seriously by the other nine guitar players in the statistic. Because normal guitar players don’t need the guitar to be cool and to start conversations.

 

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Mind Field

The same drive that causes a person to get a face tattoo and proudly show it off, may cause that person to feel shame and embarrassment years later. The power of the human mind can give us the power to be content, miserable, or apathetic about the same exact situation. While I hear the song “Semi Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind playing on the speakers at a restaurant and get excited about what I deem as the best song in recorded history, others at the table may casually respond with, “Yeah, I liked that song in high school”.

If I won two free tickets to the Super Bowl, I wouldn’t be excited at all. I would give them away. But I’m sure there would be plenty of people willing pay me decent money for them.

My mind is powerful enough to limit my happiness if something goes wrong; something as little as missing the right exit on the interstate. I can be bummed about that for an hour if I let myself, sometimes. If only I was powerful enough to convince my mind that it really doesn’t matter, I could be happy instead. There is truth to being able to choose happiness over despair. It all goes back to my dad’s theory of mind-over-matter: “If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.