BORN RED

I was out on a typical millennial dad errand: a Facebook marketplace pickup my wife arranged. She set up the car GPS for me, scheduled the whole thing, and reminded me to go, using my Facebook account (complete loss of autonomy, marriage). The funny thing is that today’s pickup was supposed to be from a guy. Instead I met his his wife. Perhaps we are not the only ones using Mister’s Facebook account. Hard to live without using Meta's product, at least we minimize exposure with a single "function-only" account for local parent groups, play dates and marketplace. Anyway – I was skeptical that a dude would be selling a fancy toddler mat… I wouldn’t. Maybe if my wife asked me to... and even then, chances are that she would be the one coordinating the transaction (if she wasn't 39 weeks pregnant).

That aside, after the quick transition, I stopped to take a picture of a sleek black Tesla harboring the bold licence plate: “BORN RED”. I collect bumper stickers and license plates, for no good reason other than occasionally texting them to friends they remind me of. Most of the time they are, plain silly, political, or religious. It would have ended there if the owner of the car hadn’t popped out and said hi in an inquisitive way. To which, obviously surprised, I replied: “Nice plate, that’s a good one”. The high potential for the nature of the message to be political made me suddenly nervous.

“Yeah, that was honestly not my best shot” Mr Tesla replied. I gave him my best smile-confused-intrigued face which sent the right signal as he followed: “It was supposed to actually be red and now I just look like I have a card from the other club. I get some many trucks honking at me, it embarrasses my wife who puts it on me every time. By now I’m just annoyed”. He seemed amused by his own story and definitely not threatened by my comment so I kept going.

“Man, that’s funny- at least you are more creative than all the Tesla owners who can’t seem to resist puns around electricity-related terms. It’s hard to find good names. We are struggling to find a name for a baby boy arriving in a few days” (I proudly raised the pillow I picked up, hoping to contextualize my statement).

“Well, good luck with that. Just don’t call him red. Have a good day”… and that was it. The conceptual nature of the color red is telling of the absurd puzzle that civilization is. It's rare for a color to just be a color, when color itself is a human concept. It's turtles all the way down.

← Index / Published on 2024-10-01