Yellow Fever.....

My favorite color is yellow, and not that wimpy pastel you see everywhere at Easter. I like the bright, sunshine yellow that almost hurts your eyes. Oddly enough, I can remember almost the exact moment that I decided yellow would be my favorite color. I was around 15 years old, and I was reading one of those books that my Aunt Rosie would call "dippy romances". The heroine of the book (ever more oddly enough, I don't remember the book) wore a yellow gown to some sort of fancy ball in the South during the Civil War, and I was forever hooked on yellow.

I went to the prom that year in the tenth grade, the date of a senior my Aunt Rosie always called "Figment". As in of my imagination. I talked Mom into making me a long dress out of yellow qiana (the only word I know of that is spelled with a "q" but no "u" but still isn't allowed in Scrabble) fabric. Mom made the dress (and a modest, filmy cape to wear with it) and even allowed me to go (and go on living) after I got suspended from school that very week.

Mom also redid my room in yellow, the wallpaper so bright she swore she needed sunglasses to go in my room. I loved it.

When I got married, I wanted a bouquet of yellow roses. And because I got married the year after Princess Di, I had to have a LOT of them. No one told me that two dozen roses would weigh approximately 85 pounds. Some thought I was trembling from nerves. Rather, my arm was about to give out.

It isn't just the color yellow either. I like yellow flavors. Lemon cookies, banana popsicles, pineapple anything.
I gravitate toward yellow even today. A photograph with yellow in it will grab my attention. An advertisement with yellow in it is almost a guaranteed sale. It isn't even a conscious thing; it's more of a visceral reaction. I hope my students never figure out that all they have to do for a good grade on a project is put some yellow in it.