The Things You Notice

It struck me as rather weird, but perhaps you will disagree. I just thought I should relate it because it has been rattling around in my brain and writing it down is the best way to exorcise it.

The other day, as I was driving to work, I came to a stoplight. I was the second car in the line and there were several cars around me. After spinning through all the presets on the radio and finding only banal commercials, I decided to look around me. I am normally scanning around anyway, but looking for danger and possible danger is different than looking at the scenery.

The car in front of me was white. It was some kind of SUV. The car beside it was also white, and the same make of car. I am not up on all my cars to be able to tell you if they were from the same model year, but they looked quite similar. Instead of pursuing that further, I looked to my left and noticed something odd. That car was white too. Three white cars clumped together at the traffic light. Then I noticed that the car behind that one was also white, as was the one behind it.

What a rather odd coincidence I thought. Then I started scanning more, because surely the other cars would have some colour. No. the two cars behind me were white as well. I was completely surrounded by a bunch of white cars! I should point out that my car is bright blue like the picture above.

Sure, white is a popular colour. Weird that so many people would choose it in North America, though. When I lived in Japan a quarter of a century ago, white was the most popular car colour as it was cheapest to fix when bodywork was needed. That made it an attractive fleet car even if it didn’t turn any heads on the road. The resale value was also probably higher, but I am not sure about that.

I didn’t get paranoid and start thinking that I was being followed by “the men in white”, but it is just one of those things you see while driving.

Have you ever seen anything strange on the road? Please feel free to comment.