Roof and Re-doo

I.T.-ologist and I went biking around the neighborhood looking at roofs on Friday night. What color roof do most red brick houses with white shutters have? That was the million dollar question of the evening. We're getting a new roof and wouldn't you know black is not the only roof color out there. I never noticed that before. I notice when the sun leaves a sky full of deep red-orange. Or when the mailman forgets to put the flag down. Oil on the driveway doesn't escape me. I found a wooley bear crawling in the corner of the garage last week.

But I never noticed that my row after row of suburban neighbors had anything other than standard black roofs. We biked by tan roofs and black with red and white alternating shingles. There were green roofs and a blue sparkley one. Some were black fading to grey and then to white and back to black. One even looked sort of like the pattern on the wooley bear. Many matched the color of the brick on the house or contrasted perfectly with the siding.

Anyway, we're having a hard time picturing any other color on the top of our house besides the black that is already there.

We tabled the decision and pedaled on over to the Frosty Treat.

There, a boy about 8 years old cut in front of me while I was making another really big decision- vanilla ice cream in a cone or turtle sundae. The girl inside bent down and peered out the window at him. He held up a yellow square of ice cream on a stick. I assume it once looked like this, but his had two hollow spots where the eyes were missing and his red part was beginning to frown.

He said to the ice cream girl, "Can I have a re-doo?" It didn't immediately register with her what he was saying and she asked him to repeat. He said, "A re-doo. This isn't what I expected."

I couldn't wait to hear how she was going to handle this, but the boy's mother, just noticing he had gone up to the window, rushed to her rescue and told the ice cream girl that she'd already explained to her son that they don't do re-doo's and that he had to live with his choice. I felt sorry for the kid and I really wanted to see what the ice cream people train their employees to say at times like these. But I also had to hand it to the mother for taking advantage of the teachable moment- think carefully about your choice, then stick with it and make it work.

This whole incident made me just a bit nervous. I wasn't going to be able to get a re-doo. I ordered the turtle. It was exactly what I expected and so was the spare tire that appeared around my waist as I ate it.

Over at the picnic table area where I sat packing on the pounds, while I.T. ate his humble little vanilla in a small cone, I saw the Sponge Bob boy. He wasn't eating the yellow melty square pants. A little girl not too far from him was licking away at that. He was enjoying blue moon in a cup with a spoon. I smiled at his ingenuity.

I'm guessing this boy knows the color of every roof in his neighborhood.

So, any thoughts on what color roof looks best on a red brick house with white trim?

Heidi