I don’t think I’m narrating an original experience when I say that every time my father tried to tell me a bedtime story, the only person who benefited from it was him. Less than a minute in, he’d be slurring his words out of exhaustion or just downright snoring. My father liked to think he had a penchant for bedtime stories, but his creativity continually failed him. He’d always come back to the same one. He’d say that each time he told the story, it was different, but I guarantee you not even the sharpest listener would be able to differentiate the story from yesterday and the day before.
He called it “Blue Tractor, Yellow Tractor, and Green Tractor”. My cousin sister, my younger cousin brother, and I would all be driving in our tractors. I’m not sure why he chose tractors; I’d never shown any interest in them, but I wasn’t in a position to complain. My cousin sister was the blue tractor, my cousin brother was the green one, and I was the yellow one. The story always went the same way. The three of us would’ve been coming back late at night after a long day at work at the farm (I’m not sure why my father thought that working at a farm would be enticing for us at the ripe age of 8), and one of us would get our tires stuck in a ditch. The other two wouldn’t know what to do or how to get the one stuck out of the ditch.
The red tractor was an angel sent from heaven. The red tractor is who we’d call every time without fail because we knew the red tractor would know what to do. The red tractor almost seemed bigger than all of us. I was obsessed with Power Rangers at the time, so maybe it seemed so strong because the Red Power Ranger was the strongest.Â
The red tractor was my brother. Ever since I was young, my parents, or at least my father, portrayed him as our saving grace. That we wouldn’t know what to do if my brother weren’t there. I hated that. I hated that we needed someone else’s help. I didn’t necessarily harbour any resentment towards my brother, but rather towards the non-existent, fictional red tractor. The first few times I heard that story, it was fine; I didn’t think much of it. Then he was our saviour the next time, then the time after that, and after that, and it just continued till I couldn’t stand him, or more specifically, couldn’t stand it anymore. In all its glory and power, the famed red tractor.Â
I wish I could provide you with some sort of learning experience from this, that I overcame it, and the colour red is just a colour. But for lack of better words, I hate red tractors, and the red Power Ranger, too, for that matter. I asked my father to stop telling me that story altogether; it bothered me that I couldn’t explain why. So if I see a red tractor out in the wild, there is a guarantee there will be some unexplained dislike to it. Or if you ask me who my favourite Power Ranger is, it’ll never be the red one. Probably the yellow Power Ranger from Samurai. But maybe that’s just bias.