Life has its good days and life has its bad days.
Sometimes it feels more bad than good… Like when you wake up and don’t have any half-and-half in the refrigerator for your coffee, or having your cowlick stand erect no matter how much gel you use, or having to celebrate a co-worker's birthday, or when you get a flat tire and AAA takes more than an hour to come and fix it, or… well, I think you know what I mean. We’ve all be there.
For me, every time I’m experiencing a bad day I quickly remember my “yellow” experience.
Yellow, oh yellow. That bright glorious color has left an indelible stain in my life.
Years ago I worked a summer job in a chemical company. I was in the canning department where I spent all day filtering adhesives, paints, and coatings into drums to be shipped to the vendor.
One afternoon I was given the task of hoisting, via chains, 250 gallons of canary yellow paint about 5 1/2 feet in the air, attach a filter, and filter it into 50 gallon drums. I’d done it before and knew the procedure precisely.
I attached the chains and easily hoisted it into the air. Then I removed the outer valve to attach the filter. What I didn’t realize is that the person who filled the tank with the canary yellow paint neglected to close the security valve.
Suddenly 250 gallons of canary yellow paint came pouring out of the spout. The pressure was intense and all I could do was hold on as canary yellow paint covered me from the neck down.
If I had hoisted that tank another six inches it would’ve hit me in the eyes, nose, and mouth, and I probably would have drowned. My obituary would’ve read, “He Died in a Sea of Yellow.”
By the time someone came to my rescue I was glowing yellow in a pool of yellow paint.
For weeks I found canary yellow in the crevices of my skin, from my underarms to my crotch to between my elongated toes. Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!
My co-workers nicknamed me “Yellow Bird.”
That was truly a bad day.
So whenever I’m having a bad day, I think yellow, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad.
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