My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places

Color Me Flummoxed

I am a fan of the Sherwin-Williams Company, if only for the crazy audacity of their logo: a giant paint can spilling its contents over Earth. What I want to know is, how did they decide on the color? Painting the earth is a big job. You don’t want to do it twice. And red is a bold choice for even the smallest home décor project.

As is yellow. Last year, Ed and I spent 45 minutes flipping through yellow paint chips when we redid our TV room. Seeking something subtle, we went with Peace Yellow. Ed covered two walls. “Whoa!” he said, squinting. It was like living inside Easter. We had failed to observe the Universal Law of Paint Chips: Whatever you choose will be two times brighter, darker and more garish than it looked on the chip.

This time, repainting the guest room, we decided to go with Benjamin Moore. They sell trial paint containers the size of baby-food jars, and, as with baby food, the idea is to smear patches of the stuff all over the walls. This enables you to try the colors out before committing to a full gallon. Off we went to the paint store.

“This is nice,” said Ed, holding up a chip of Wyndham Cream. The name was pretty but largely devoid of useful color associations. This bugs me. I like a paint namer who calls it like it is―for instance, the person who came up with Benjamin Moore’s American Cheese. Although who in their right mind―not that anybody in the midst of a home décor project is in their right mind―would cover their walls with something suggestive of Velveeta? “Some dogs I know,” Ed said. “My nephew. Your friend Clark.”

Because Wyndham Cream sounded so lovely, we bought the little jar of it, as well as a jar of Asbury Sand, Crowne Hill Yellow, Hathaway Peach and a couple of others. Only when we got them on the wall did we recognize the colors for what they actually were: Caulk, Jaundice, Band-Aid and Cheap Drugstore Foundation.

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-sized 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. What else can 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 décor 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.