Ugly Orange Shutters

Ugly Orange Shutters It’s ½ past midnight when I ease my 1989 white Nissan Sentra into the long driveway of Horseshoe Rd. A decade past its prime but its engine is still strong. I’m late, but no one ever waits up. The lights are off, but the moonlight reflects an abnormal glow off the ugly orange shutters that line the front of the house like a crazed jack o' lantern’s smile piercing through the darkness of a July night. Not my Dad’s finest moment, and according to my mother, not his only mistake. He got a deal on the paint back in a time when pumpkin paint still wasn’t a big seller. At a time before the street caught the disease they call divorce. A time when children played outside, neighbors knew each other, and everyone was too polite to say anything rude about our house looking so “festive”. First, the people up the street caught the disease and people talked like it was an isolated incident. Then my parents discovered the sickness in their own home. Within five years ½ the street had fallen victim. No longer alive with children riding bikes and neighborhood block parties, single mothers locked their doors and went to work. Farms were sold and the land developed. That’s when the mansions came like an abnormal growth. The first ones stuck out like a sore thumb. Then they spread. Now, our house sticks out like an abnormal growth. A reminder of a time when people were too polite to comment on ugly orange shutters and someone left the lights on.