Dad loved the color brown, which I found inexplicably hilarious. Who liked brown?
Mom found his choice less humorous, I think because he lavished this preference on things that might have sported a hue more lively, more comely.

He got around Mom’s dislike for his like by coming up with compromises. When he selected the family pontiac Grand Pre, he explained to we of dubious trust that the new tank-ish vehicle dominating our driveway was BRONZE, not brown.

When the sculpted, ice-blue carpet that Mom loved as much as polka dancing wore out, he replaced it with a brown turf he told us was English-Club TWEED, not brown.

When I selected my first pair of spectacles, in the fifth grade, I mooned over frames in shell pink, winsome blue, daring and darling peach. Dad, and I will never know how he managed this one, nudged me to choose what he said was MILKY MINK, not brown.