Red? A Memory From My Childhood

Here is a story of something I said when I was a child that has remained an inside joke in my family ever since.

A little background before I get into the story. I must have been about 5 years old when we moved to Peachland, BC. My dad had bought some property way out in the woods, with part of his inheritance and then built our little house on it. It was tiny, about 900 sq ft. There was one bathroom on the main floor under the stairs just off the living room that was also our dining room and opened into a tiny kitchen. The stairway up to the loft that was divided into two bedrooms, were we all slept, was just off the kitchen. At the top of the stairs there was a doorway on the right and one on the left. My parents slept in the room on the right overlooking the front of the house and driveway. My brother and I had to share the tiny room on the left that looked over the back of the property, brush and somewhere in the dense wood was the creek.

In the living room my dad put in a wood stove as our only source of heat. This is where the story takes place.

I was watching my dad assemble the wood stove and after he assembled it, he started painting the bolts so they would blend in and match the stove. Esthetically pleasing. Well, after I while I asked my dad, “what are you doing?” he said, “I am painting the bolts to match the rest of the stove”. I then said, “what color?”….he said, “black”…I said, “red?”

Yes, you have it, I loved hearing myself talk and didn’t listen too well as a child. So now we have a joke in the house whenever we say something silly without thinking we use “red?”