It appears as if at least half the vehicles on the road today were inexplicably deprived of an important step in the auto-making process: that crucial stop on the assembly line where these creations receive their zest for life, their personalities. Look around, and you see them everywhere: flat, dull, lifeless steel beasts lumbering about and trying to keep up as others zip past them in vivid color. It’s the silent epidemic of the modern world:
The Epidemic of Grey.
A Wal-Mart lot near you.
Every other car on the road is…grey. There are fifty different shades of dull and undone vehicles at every stoplight. The epidemic is so bad, most of our automotive blues, greens, and browns are now indistinguishable from our greys. It seems our collective human depression has made its mark on our transportation.
The marketing departments of the major automakers are making a valiant, though altogether dishonest, effort at helping: they disguise the grey with clever names like “Arabesque silver”, “silver pearlcoat” and “shark blue metallic clearcoat”, and people buy them, either because they’ve been fooled, because they pity the poor grey things, because they don’t want a car with any of that dangerous zest or personality, or probably because the car looks like they feel.
If the marketing departments were honest, those high-gloss brochures would list all those “different” greys thusly:
Storm Cloud
Dirty Pillowcase
Ashes
Pollution
Hospital linoleum
Pencil Smudge
Aging
Old Apartment Sink
Snot
Flood Water
Moldy Bread
Used Chewing Gum
Acid Rain
Grandma’s Nightgown
Depression
Dirty Fingernail
Lint
Mud Puddle
Prison Cell
Overpass
Cold Oatmeal
Grief
Ventilation Shaft
Abandoned Factory
Concrete
Dirty Venetian Blind
Second-hand Smoke
Mildew
Old Snow
Wet Newspaper
Dust
The good old days...
The cars suffering this cruel fate don’t complain. They have lost the will to care one way or the other about silly things like color, or their own vibrancy. They just fade into the background, unnoticed, no matter how stunning their bodies, brilliant their technology, and powerful their engines. I wonder if they prefer being grey, because the dirt which covers them is seemingly less noticeable. I wonder if they just hate having to be washed from time to time. I wonder if they ever wish they could be bright and open and loud like they were when they were children. I wonder if they ever feel a bit too naked, a bit…peeled away and translucent, as though their cruel god gave them a weakened skin which could not bear the weight of its pigment. I wonder if they ever wish they could be true blue, or mysterious yet decisive black, passionate red, happy yellow, classy burgundy, or clean glistening white.
At least, as they sit waiting at intersections, all grey and mature now, they can see they’re not alone.