The plan this week was to
write a column about the SNC-Lavalin political madness whipped up by the
muddled minds of the nation’s political elite.
Plans change; this one
because my mind refused to waste one more millisecond reading or hearing about political
incompetency and corruption.
The SNC-Lavalin scandal,
which could have been avoided with some honest moral leadership, continues
while the critical problems of climate change, the opioid epidemic, the growing
poor-rich chasm are lost in a fog of political war. It’s like kids screaming at
each other over a broken toy instead of working together to fix it.
So I decided to write about
my new car instead of the SNC-Lavalin mess.
Some months ago my wife and
I agreed it would make sense to trade our aging car and 11-year-old pickup
truck for one new vehicle.
It is a nice car. Smooth,
frisky and smells good inside. The only complaint is that all the bells, buzzers,
blinking lights and computerized thingies are almost as annoying as the politicians
arguing whether corporate criminal acts should be ignored in the interest of
saving jobs.
What is strange about our new
car is its colour. It is white.
Many years ago I vowed never
to drive a white car. It was a vow developed from a childhood trauma.
The trauma occurred the day
my father came home with our very first family vehicle. It was a brand new boxy
1956 Chevy with pimple tail lights, and should have been the envy of a
neighbourhood of rusting, slouch-back 1940s models.
It wasn’t. It was totally
white and without an inch of chrome to give it some personality.
The neighbourhood kids were
on to it immediately. Their taunts were devastating.
“Hey, there’s an ambulance
at Poling’s house!”
“No, it’s theirs. His old
man bought an ambulance.”
The adults were not any
kinder.
“Did it come with a siren?”
the next door neighbour asked.
“How much would it cost for
a rooftop red light option?” asked another.
The jokes shouted across the
lawns and the whispers and smirks at his workplace parking lot were too much
for dad. One day he brought the Chevy back to Port Arthur Motors where he had
bought it. It came back the next day with a painted blue roof. No longer could
it be called The Ambulance.
All those memories washed
over me as I drove our new, white car from the dealership. Would friends and
neighbours start calling it The Ambulance?
Then after a couple of days
on the road I realized that I was not alone in having a white car. Many of the
vehicles around me, even trucks, were white.
Some research uncovered a
startling fact: In recent years white has become the most popular colour for
new vehicles. Every second car now imported from Asia is white. Worldwide, 37
per cent of all new vehicles in 2016 were painted white.
So instead of being laughed
at and called The Ambulance my new car is lost in a sea of white cars out there
on the streets and highways.
One reason for the trend to
white vehicles is that some people consider them safer. Surveys show that black
vehicles are 12 per cent more likely to be involved in an accident than white.
Grey vehicles are 11 per cent more likely, and silver 10 per cent.
There are disadvantages to
having a white vehicle. It is difficult to find in parking lots where the
majority of vehicles seem to be white.
Also, there were times this
past winter at the lake when I thought our car had been stolen. I would get up
in the morning, look out to the parking spot and could not see it. It was
indistinguishable in the fresh-fallen snow.
But
my car’s colour is not simply white. No car colour these days has a name that
is plain or simple. Blues, for instance, are no longer simply blues. Your new
blue vehicle might be listed as Estoril, Indigo, Blu Nettuno or some other florid
appellation dreamed up by marketing ninjas.
No,
my new car is not a plain and simple white. It is Blizzard, which likely is why
I had so much trouble finding it during the winter.
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