The Green Side

We painted my daughter’s room yesterday. It’s been pink for about six years and she’s been really sick of pink for almost half that time.

Thanks to my Dad’s “We ain’t paying no one to do what we can do ourselves” philosophy, I can paint both the interior and exterior of houses and do a pretty fair job. However, with interiors, usually I’m just painting white over white, which is a fairly simple task.

Not so for this paint job.

I knew I was in trouble color wise, when she said, “I think I want green walls.” “We’ll see,” was my hasty reply. All the while I’m shuffling through my mental card catalog of reasons, searching for just the right excuse for why not to paint green.

Then it hits me, and I sat back with my mind at ease, knowing full well that there’s no way my wife is going to let a room in her house be painted green.

And I was right…at first.

When confronted with the green room idea, she shot me a “No way!” glance. Then politely gave the standard, “We’ll see” reply, adding on some wise parental comments about needing to find a color that would work well with the furniture.

I smiled and went about my business secure in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be painting anything green.

But my daughter had other plans and she’s quite the schemer. She set her sights on Mom. She knew that if she could lure Mom over to the green side of the force, then she could easily crush the anti-green rebellion.

Little did I know that while I’m off doing who knows what (probably driving around in my new Chevrolet Trailblazer), my wife and daughter are still discussing the whole green room thing.

You should know that my wife, while not actually employed as or even making money at it, is quite an artist. Her father who has a wonderful eye for art and her mother, a former art teacher/painter who successfully dabbles in all kinds of art, have genetically instilled a true gift of artistry in my wife.

I wasn’t there so I don’t really know what happened. However, I know things were going well for the rebellion, and we were holding our ground. That is, until my daughter pulled out her secret weapon.

“Hey Mom, what if we paint the walls green with a ceiling blue and you could paint clouds on the ceiling?” At that instant, miles away, I felt a disturbance in the force.

I got home to find that not only was green the new color of choice, but we already had paint chips from Sherwin-Williams and were working on the right combination of green and blue to work with the existing décor.

And I stood by helpless as green became a reality.

With help from my daughter, I painted. First the ceiling blue and then the walls green.

After finishing, I cocked my head to the side, looked the around the room and stepped over to the green side.

Because it really does look good.