Tag Archives: yellow

Color

Color: (n) pigmentation of the skin, especially as an indication of someone’s race.

To find a real black person you have to go deep into Africa.

The only white people are albinos.

To get yellow skin usually requires liver disease.

And red skin is any one of a number of young girls in Fort Lauderdale during Spring Break.

Yet for some reason we decide to take these colors and differentiate not only race–not only customs–but certainly intelligence, morality, violence and quality.

What actually is the difference in color between an American Negro and an American Hispanic, or an American housewife of Beverly Hills after leaving the tanning booth?

It can’t be about color. There just isn’t that much variation.

And of course, once you get right below the epidermis, we all pink up.

So what in the hell is this all about?

At one time we were so frightened there wouldn’t be enough squirrels, rabbits and wild turkeys in the woods, so we tried to thin the herd of our human competition by making them lesser, therefore teaching them they couldn’t eat the actual meat of the buffalo, but could have all the internal organs they wanted.

Are we still stuck in that survival mode?

Are we so terrified that we’re going to be exposed as lackers or slackers that we try to characterize one group of people as already occupying that space–and then colorize them?

 

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Abysmal

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abysmal: (adj.) extremely bad; appalling

I was always glad it was pink. I think there’s something nice about it being pink. Blue would be weird. Certainly not green. I guess yellow would have been a possibility.

I’m talking about Pepto-abysmal.

I took it as a kid. Somewhere along the line in my childhood–about eight years of age–my parents made the transition from the old-time use of castor oil to Pepto-abysmal. Now caster oil tasted like what I imagine licking tar off of hot pavement on a summer day would be like.

Horrible.

And for some reason, they wanted you to drink it straight down, which always led to gagging and sometimes throwing up, which would convince your parents that the stuff worked, because you would feel better after vomiting, and caster oil would get the props for the cure.

I was so glad when Pepto-abysmal made its introduction.

Am I weird? I kind of liked the stuff. Matter of fact, every once in a while I would go to the medicine cabinet and take a swig. (You had to be careful, because it would leave a tell-tale pink chalk residue on your lips–a little difficult to explain to your over-scrutinizing mother why you’re “hitting the pink stuff.”)

I think my mother once gave me Pepto-abysmal because I had a headache. For a season it was the magic cure–so common in the average household that they developed this big quart-sized version. It was huge.

But if there was something aggravating, dastardly or nasty stirring in your gut, Pepto was well-prepared to go down there and do battle. My mother was convinced that she saved the life of my young nephew, who had an appendicitis attack, by giving him Pepto-abysmal. She insisted  that when they removed the appendix, they found it encased in a pink fluid. Being a kid, I never realized this was impossible. And it further increased the mystique of the magical fluid.

Now I’m not stupid–I know that it’s really Pepto-Bismol, but I thought it was cute to call it Pepto–abysmal, considering that it takes care of things–gut-wrenching things–that are abysmal.

If you didn’t find it cute, I am sorry. Maybe you need to be “Pepto’d up.”