The Friday Fillip
I’ll choose yellow over white, because, well, white just isn’t the same.
Maybe it’s more restful on the eyes. Maybe it’s more stimulating than white.
Whatever the reason, a fresh legal pad — can be 8 1/2 by 11, though —
and a newly sharpened number 2 Ticonderoga, and I’m ready for bear.
Or nifty doodles.
There’s a history to legal pads, so I learn. Old Yeller: The illustrious history
of the yellow legal pad by Suzanne Snider in Legal Affairs of last year
at this time, takes us back to 1888 in Holyoke, Massachusets, where writing pads
were invented. It seems that around the turn of that century a judge
asked for the wide, clear margin line on the left, so he could make
parenthetical notes, and thus the legal pad was born.
The matter of yellow is more vexed. Snider talks to psychologists, purchasing
agents, lawyers… but can’t come up with a simply when or why for the
jaundice. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
But it’s not just lawyers. See Maya Angelou’s last line in http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060429/LIFESTYLE/604290310/1024&template=printart
and Jeannie Cheatam, the pianist at http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/04/18/books/17_26_584_8_06.prt saying that “Jeannie’s old-school method of writing what is a 400-plus page book is by hand.
“I wrote it longhand on a yellow striped pad. I had a woman who did all the typing for me. I’d do some chapters and then I’d take them down to her on the yellow pad and she’d type them up for me.”