I don't really believe in the Y-49 curse, but I might be crazy. And I might be starting to come around. I took Yellow Dog, my '90 Barbados Yellow CRX Si, out for a drive today, and had a few run-ins with "the curse". Thankfully, they were categorized as near-misses, but it's still a bit unsettling. No less than THREE cars decided to turn across my path today - all of them turning left, all of them oncoming, and every single one of them was an SUV. To make things worse, each and every one of them did the little "hesitation turn": they committed to their turn, then halfway through it spotted a small bump, had a sudden aneurism, or something that made them decide to slow almost to a stop, directly in front of me! The last and final one was a Suburban; it was on a tight 2-lane road, there was traffic behind him and tree-lined ditches on either side of the road, and it ended up with me having the front brakes locked and the tires screeching, and missing him by what felf like all of an inch and a half.
The pisser of it all is that this was in broad daylight, I was travelling UNDER the posted speed limit (not my usual mode, but I was paranoid about anything happening to the car!), and I had my freaking headlights on. How can you NOT see a blinding-yellow car with its headlights on in full daylight, fer puke's sake?!
While I generally expect there to be idiots on the road, I also generally expect them to not be actively AIMING at me with their lumbering land-yachts. Guess I give 'em too much credit...
Oddly, this sort of thing doesn't happen often at all when I drive Ruby, my '91 Torino Red (Burgundy) CRX DX. The only other CRX I've ever driven that seemed to magnetically attract large metallic cars with small-minded drivers was my silver '88 CRX Si.
What I want to know is, What the hell? Why are the silver and yellow cars seemingly invisible to other drivers, despite their obviously brighter colors? My wife thinks it's a size thing, but I pointed out that all three of the cars in questions are second-generation CRXs. Same shape, same size. I'm stymied.
And people wonder why I don't drive the yellow CRX very often. It's nice, it's clean, it's all stock, and it's even a little bit pretty (the paint needs some attention, though)... but still, it scares me. Not the car, just what it seems to do to other drivers. It seems to short out their brains. "Oooohhh - yellow car. Dang! Forgot how to drive!"
That insipid Suburban driver can count himself lucky; I damn near went full-on road-rage and followed his ass with the intent to haul his stupid self out of his vehicle and beat him into unconsciousness with his own severed arm. I don't think "Y-49 Curse" is an accepted legal defense for assault and battery, though. Maybe it should be. Hell, if a jury of twelve people who were too stupid to get out of jury duty can accept "Twinkies" as a legal defense, why not "Y49 Rage"?
Like I said, I don't
really believe in The Curse, but I'm starting to view it the same way I look at Voodoo or black magic (or, occasionally, electricity): I might not believe in it, but I don't want to tempt fate by screwing around with it, either. While I might stand up proudly and state that there's no god, I don't think I'd say it while sitting in a yellow CRX; that's just
asking for it.
Mike