Color Design: It Could Save Lives Or Be Horribly, Horribly Misused

What the hell is wrong with people?

And by people, I mean everyone else but me.

So, you guys.

You know who you are.

People who don’t look over their shoulders before changing lanes.

Thieves who break into my car, the one I can’t lock up because of Idiot A above.

Clerks at Lucky who ignore the “Three’s a crowd” rule, thus keeping me in the store long enough for Idiot B above to break into my car and steal all the expensive electronics I left on the dash.

You’re on my list now, Idiots A, B, and C. And you too, dashboard. Being inanimate will save no one! Take it from me, as someone who’s on my list, you don’t want to be there.

But mostly it’s the people at Kensington.

Why them?

Because they made a power strip.

A power strip that has friendly, Otter Pops-colored outlets on it.

As everyone knows, nothing says, “Come here and lick me” to a toddler quite like an Otter Pop-colored object.

Would you look at this and expect to get zapped with 1.21 gigawatts of electricity if you licked it?

Usually, these objects turn out to be mostly harmless Otter Pops, and not fully energized electrical outlets.

But not when the fine designers bent on infanticide at Kensington are on the job.

How do I know this is a sinister plot rather than some misguided belief by the folks at Kensington that people using this power strip won’t have children?

Because the packaging is totally opaque. No clear plastic window to show you the festively colored power strip that will tempt your inquisitive toddlers to their doom, to warn you off to some all-beige knock-off that’s also a third the price (and ‘VL-Listed’ instead of ‘UL-Listed’, whatever that means).

“But Ian,” you’re tempted to point out, “the box does say, right on the front, ‘Color Coded Rings.’”

Shut up. Also, I refute your feeble argument thusly:

It does not say ‘Otter Pop-colored Color Coded Rings That Will Draw Young Children To Them Like Ants To Store Clerks Staked Into the Ground With Honey Poured All Over Them.’

For all I can tell looking at the plain white box with its unassuming blue print, the colors are white, off-white, eggshell, alabaster, gray, and black! Nothing on the box says to me, “WARNING: Deep, vivid colors that will scream out to your children to stick forks into the candy-coated delicious sockets!”

Why do we even need colors on a power strip anyway? Is the electricity that much better when it flows through bright colors?

What the heck, people? Am I supposed to bear the heavy responsibility of keeping my kids safe? In addition to the Herculean effort I spend in the much more important task of keeping myself out of harm’s way?

Hell, it’s all I can do to keep myself from tripping and falling onto one of my kids. Ever since they learned to walk, they’re underfoot, grabbing onto my leg and burbling something about loving me.

And since I’m often juggling knives or flaming torches, it’s really important I don’t fall on anyone, let alone my kids.

Nowhere does it warn about making my breath flammable.

Now that I think about it, I should probably stop drinking so heavily. At least when I juggle. One of these days a torch is going to set off my breath and I’ll inadvertently flambé the family dog or one of the kiddos.

Do those torches or bottles of Jack have warning labels about this possibility? No. Of course not. Lazy torch-makers and distillers. They have no shred of human decency.

Or is it laziness? I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a conspiracy afoot to prevent my genes from propagating. That would be very short-sighted of Humanity.

But on the slim chance that this inane failure to protect my kids is inadvertent, that everyone out there thinks I’ve got my kids’ safety in hand, I have just one thing to say:

That’s the most irresponsible presumption I’ve ever heard.

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