Life Out Here: Burnt popcorn, gray vanilla flavor

“Mr. Kofford,” my student said to me. “Why do you wear gray all the time?”

“I don’t wear gray all the time,” I said.

“OK, Mr. Technical, why do you wear gray so much? Even your car is gray.”

“Gray is my favorite color,” I responded.


“No one’s favorite color is gray,” she said.

“Are you saying I’m no one?” I retorted.

“No, I’m saying no one could possibly have a favorite color of gray,” the student said. “It’s so dull.”

“I think gray is a beautiful color,” I said. “It’s so very … gray.”

“OK,” she said, retreating but readying another tack. “What’s your second favorite color?”

“Brown,” I answered.

She threw up her arms in the air in exasperation.

“You are very strange,” said she.

“Maybe,” said I. “But that doesn’t make me a bad person.”

—

A quarter century ago I worked with a woman who found everything about me reprehensible. I’d experienced people disliking me previously, but this woman hated everything about me, from my politics to the way I walked — “like an orangutan” she insisted — to my lack of a perceivable hairstyle.

But the angriest she ever got with me was when I walked in one lunchtime with a milkshake.

“Are you drinking a vanilla milkshake?” my coworker asked.

“I am, and enjoying it immensely,” I responded.

“You are so weird. No one ever orders a vanilla milkshake,” she said.